Pirates of the Great Lakes
by Ravenwinggod
Summary: The CS in economic ruin, the Great Lakes have become the center of commercial traffic for most of the independent nations. Pirates clog it's waters. Follow the tale of one crew, and their struggle to make it in this new world. Rated for themes.
1. Prologue

Prologue:

North America Circe: August 110 PA.

The two theater war fought by the Coalition States against Tolkeen and Free Quebec has altered the very landscape of North America. But the end to these costly wars has had a detrimental effect on both the CS, and its former state of Free Quebec. The former allies now limp along, economically both nations are devastated. Returning veterans discovered that the nations they served so faithfully during the war, can not keep the promises made. Disabled veterans are returning home broken and lame, with little prospects of employment. Neither nation has enough employment for its healthy workers. Social welfare programs are pushed beyond the breaking point, as many veterans and their family's turn to them for aid.

In the former state of Free Quebec the economy has suffered just as badly. Wartime efforts to produce the needed goods for war against their one time brethren has left the nation in massive debt. Free Quebec has been fairly independent, but with a failing economy, and crushing amounts of foreign debt owed to The NGR, it finds it may not be able to hold onto that independence it has so recently struggled so hard to attain. To prevent itself from slipping further into debt, as well as provide some stimulus for its economy, Free Quebec has begun to cut expenditures that are either to costly, or tactically and economically nonviable. Free Quebec has recently negotiated the sale of the St. Lawerance lock system, to a independent company, AmTrans. A shipping company who has also negotiated an exclusive contract for importation/exportation with the new independent nation.

This has allowed the Free Quebec government to isolate itself, while still retaining the economic stimulus that it desperately needs. While many in the government are unhappy with the sale of the lock system, claiming it makes the young nation more vulnerable, supporters of the sale claim just the opposite. Those supporters believe that due to the terms of the sale, and the reduced costs for Free Quebec ships, as well as the contract for AmTrans to transport goods for Free Quebec, allows the nation to focus their already stretched and meager budget further. Furthermore Free Quebec has found the contract with AmTrans, has allowed it to conduct trade with other nations it has no political, or economic ties to. This has created a small trickle of influx into the economy, as Quebecois made goods flow out, and are sold in the surrounding kingdoms.

Meanwhile in the Coalition States, the shattered economy has lead to massive unemployment, inflation, and destabilization. The Emperor's proposed twenty year plan of expansion had been completely forgotten, as Emperor Prosek unveils his new five year plan for economic recovery. If government officials thought the twenty year expansion of the domain of man was stretching things, they see the economic plan as pure wishful thinking. Most economist in the CS have proposed that it will take at least twice that time to pull the nation out of it's economic depression. The economic collapse is attributed to overpaid military contracts, and other wastefulness during the Tolkeen and Free Quebec wars.

The government paid out billions to well over a million families, the survivors of deceased service members. The million plus dead, including the renowned hero of the CS, General Jericho Holmes and his entire field army during the Tolkeen war, is credited with much of the economic damage. The government, due to the sheer fiscal loss on paying such death policies, reneged on more then half of these. Besides the billions paid to family's upon the death of a service member, their were billions more in lost equipment, and vehicles. And these expenditures were only those incurred by the CS Army and Air force.

The near total destruction of the CS navy at the hands of the Free Quebec navy, along with the lost of trillions of credits in ships and equipment has over extended the CS fiscal budget past the braking point. The government has found it has little if any money to replace the losses of either their army or navy. Worse monthly wages to the remaining service personal threaten to drain what little the government has left. New taxes aimed at raising funds rapidly have only had the effect of slowing private spending. The CS government has tried to issue additional credits, but this has led to massive inflation. As CS credits become worth less and less, the average CS citizen is finding that essential items such as food, utilities and other necessities become more costly. Furthermore the CS refusal to trade outside of its own territory has only further hampered their economy.

Chi-Town, in an attempt to prop up its failed economy, has recently announced that the 'Burbs, the so called no man's land, is a fully protected CS city. Tax revenues, is the reason for this sudden change of heart. But Chi-Town is discovering that the people of the 'Burbs are in as bad a situation, as every other CS citizen. The Burb's were home to many of the returning Veterans, who have taken what little in the way of severance packages, and moved to other locations. The Veterans and their family's hope to find better opportunities else where. The addition of the Burbs as CS cities has had little effect, save to send the non-human residents fleeing.

The CS efforts in its recovery are further hampered by the dissolution of the treaty with Northern Gun, and the Manistique Imperium. Both nations were guaranteed certain amounts of trade, which the failing CS economy, simply cannot maintain. These two nations have activated the escape clauses in their original contracts with the CS, thus freeing them to once more trade with the whole of North America. The CS, economically strained to the breaking point can ill afford to anger these two industrial giants, as they still provide nearly 25% of the economic stability of the CS, thus the CS remains silent.

But the CS has more problems then just a failing economy. The failed attack on the Xiticix hives by Lazlo, only compounded the situation with these creatures. Now the CS must embark on a war it cannot afford, against a foe it may not be able to win against. Minnesota is still a hotbed of terrorist, and guerrilla warfare, with CS casualties as high as during the height of the war with Tolkeen, only now the CS faces near constant attacks by roving Xiticix swarms. In the CS state of Lone Star, the Pecos Bandits, under the leadership of Emperor Sabre Laser have essentially destroyed the infamous Simmons Line. The Pecos Bandits have, for years inflicted such damage on the line that its original purpose was laughable. The cost in credits, manpower and lives make the line a logistic nightmare, and more then one official has asked what they were thinking when they built it. The classical white elephant, the CS has scrapped any plans to rebuild or repair the line. While the CS retains its naval base in Lone Star, they face near constant raids at the hands of the Pecos Bandits.

However the Pecos bandits, Xiticix swarms, and Tolkeen insurgents aren't the only threats to national security. Throughout CS territory the dreaded Federation Of Magic conducts raids, terrorist actions, and other low level warfare. The Federation has recently been shown to have taken on nearly all of the Tolkeen diehards, who refuse to except the destruction of their former kingdom. The Federation of Magic has proven itself a dangerous foe, as many of the former Tolkeen fighters bring with them priceless battle experience as well as proven Coalition troop killing measures. The Federation of Magic is aided not just by the Coalitions economic problems, but by a deadly alliance. Atlantis. As the Splurgoth seem to be rapidly colonizing much of the Earth, they provide the Federation with troops, supplies and slaves.

While all of these problems hamper the CS, the lose of their naval presence in the great lakes, is devastating. The CS while still possessing an adequate fleet of small patrol boats and mini subs, has only half a dozen capital grade warships on the Lakes. Thus CS shipping, which is reliant on the great lakes, and other waterways is in constant danger of pirate attacks. These pirates now move freely between the lakes, and the St. Lawrence river, as Amtrans has declared itself politically neutral. As long as its fees are paid, it will allow any nation, or ship to use the locks to move back and forth. The navy of Free Quebec, nearly unscathed in the war with the CS is able to resist these pirate attacks fairly well. Thus the pirates focus on the CS, and other powers of the Great Lakes.

The CS must use what little resources it has to protect the gains of the war, but those gains threaten to lose them far more. More then one CS historian is ready to declare the Tolkeen/Quebec war a Pyrrhic victory at best. Others claim it may be the stray that brakes the camels back. Only time will tell if the CS can recover from the setbacks it now experiences.

The Coalition may be in economic recession, but most of North America is not. Economically the many independent nations are experiencing a surging raise in the amount of trade they conduct. The Coalitions economic problems means that nation can no longer afford to launch attacks outside it's borders. This has allowed most independent nations to freely conduct trade with each other, and beyond. Without interference from the Coalition Army, or Navy, which prevented nearly ninety percent of such trade.

Another effect of this trade is a sudden specialization of skills and industries within many communities. As well as dozens of sudden boom towns, which find themselves with an influx of citizens trying to make a living in the world. Nowhere are these towns appearing more then in the Great Lakes region. Dozens of new communities are springing up around the lakes, or along its connected waterways. These communities focused on the needs of pirates, bandits, and thieves. As well as legitimate merchant marines, sailors, mercenaries, travelers, and merchants. CS propaganda paints these towns as lawless, the homes of outlaws and others who prey upon humanity. While this is certainly true from the CS's perspective, the truth is these towns while being more then a little rough and tumble, are reasonably safe. Law Enforcement, as well as security is fairly good, but the laws of these towns are more relaxed then in more traditional communities.

Because of the increase in trade, several new independent companies have formed. These companies have specialized area's of business that would not have been viable a few years ago. These are not the massive corporations like Northern Gun or Triax, but not for a lack of trying. These companies are relatively new, and each is growing rapidly. The Big Ten, the most prosperous, and widely influential of these corporations are based in the newly rebuilt city of New Buffalo. Built on the ruins of the former city, New Buffalo is a rapidly growing city, of some hundred thousand people, most either employed by the Big Ten, or working in related fields.

Amongst the Big Ten's growth and developing business, are rumors of Black Market connections. Each of the Big Ten is ruthless in its protection of what it considers it's turf. Each Corporation is lead by a shadowy board of directors and share holders, whose identities are not public knowledge. These corporations are cut-throat in the extreme, but share power seemingly without problems. This habit of staying out of each others business area, has only strengthened the rumors of Black Market connections. But only four of the Big Ten corporations, are household names.

Amtrans, or American Transportation as it is properly called, is perhaps the worlds largest shipping company. Although it does no small amount of importation/exportation of goods as well. Amtrans owns a fleet of freighters, barges, cargo planes, hover trains, and hover trucks. These are used by it to transport goods for other companies. Amtrans purchase of the lock system from Free Quebec has lead to much of the economic boom. With easy transportation between many communities using the river and Great lakes allowing almost all to share in the prosperity.

Norcom, short for Northern Communications, owns, operates, and maintains the largest communications and computer network in North America. Covering the entirety of the Great Lakes region, and connected to the Coalition and Free Quebec's communications networks. The company continues to expand it's area of service almost monthly, with new lines, transmitter towers and other needed hardware going up monthly.

Securetech is the largest security firm in North America. Securetech holds most contracts for law enforcement in the newly forming boom towns, as well as dozens of long established communities. Securetech guarantees a reduction in violent crime by forty percent in its first year of employment. While arguably a mercenary unit, Securetech's personal are expertly trained in law enforcement procedures to deal with almost any type of perpetrator. They provide land, air, and water based law enforcement services to their clients. But rarely venture further then establish zones around a city or town.

Genetech is a massive medical, pharmaceutical, and genetic research company. Rumors of stolen CS genetics data are claimed to be where this corporation got its start. Regardless, Genetech has introduced several promising new products, not the least amongst them is the so called 'life extension' serums, which greatly extend the lifespans of their recipients. Their product lines include cybernetics, as well as many new gene therapy procedures. Genetech clinic's, hospitals, and augmentation centers have state of the art equipment, the cleanest facilities, and the best trained staff.

Since the Coalitions economy has collapsed, and its currency inflated horribly the universal credit has fallen out of favor amongst the people of North America. NG/MI dollars or Black Market issued Black Credits are the primary form of currencies used by people.


	2. Chapter One

Chapter one:

A Case of mistaken Identity:

Captain Markham 'Cross' Coleman stepped onto the deck of the _Relentless_, the ship was recently captured by he and his band of pirates.

The _Relentless_ was a small freighter, which meant she was at least a hundred feet longer then his own NG Attack/Escort destroyer _the Dragonray. _A NG Dragonfly class aerial attack craft hovered just of the port-side bow. The little helicopter like craft kicking up tons of sea spray as it hung in the air. It's powerful hover engines screamed as it hung in the air. Flying around the captured ship like a swarm of angry bees were the many SAMAS and NG Redhawks of the pirate band. The pilots of those robotic suits of armor keeping an eye to the sky for possible attackers. Higher and further out were the squadron of Rocket bikes.

Captain Markham was typically referred to as Captain Cross, and he nodded at his first-mate, Tusks, an ogre woman with a penchant for wearing nearly nothing, and having an abundance of body hair, in places typical human women shaved or removed. Still she was a skilled sailor, his best friend and lover, so he didn't mind that she didn't shave her underarms or other parts. Take the good with the bad his momma had always told him.

Tusks was by no definition beautiful, but she wasn't ugly either. She was a sort of middle of the road woman, pretty in many ways, yet nothing to send a video-letter back to Lone Star about either. She stood just over seven feet tall, which made her about a foot taller then he. She had long black hair that she kept in a lose tail at the base of her skull. Although she rarely if ever combed or brushed it. She was well tanned, from life at sea and in the constant sun. She had a large chest, hips, and buttocks, but she had told him more then once that she was small in all those area's by ogre standards. She had a well toned body, not overly muscled, but enough that one knew she could easily hold her own. Again she had told him she was small by the standards of her race, her people tending to be both heavily muscled, as well as heavy set. Tusks was so called, for the small set of tusks that grew from her lower jaw. Although her real name was Tracy, one of the crew, with the exception of Cross used it though.

Tusks had no use for clothing, beyond a simple bra and cut off shorts. She wore a talisman of armor taken from an Altara warrior women around her neck. The former owner had worn it around her waist, but the ogress's waist was much larger then the lithe woman who had originally wore it. The talisman provided her with an invisible force field, protecting her from injury. She held a Kittani plasma axe in one hand, a Kittani KEP plasma pistol holstered on her wide hips.

Captain Cross tipped his hat, a navy blue stetson, to Tusks, she was a lady after all and it was only proper to be polite. Tusks face was one of concern, and he wondered at this. Looking out across the deck he spotted the problem immediately. The cargo wasn't what it was suppose to be, and he was left with a complete clusterfrag.

This ship, a cargo vessel out from Ishpeming was suppose to be carrying brand new Smiling Jack SAMAS, to be delivered to The CS state of Iron Heart. Supposedly there was to have been some four hundred and sixty new suits of the valuable power armor. The Escort vessels that had surrounded the ship had matched the ones their contact had told them. Five Black Eel torpedo boats, and three Swift class patrol boats. The ships hull number matched the targets, and the captain had expected easy sailing. True the torpedo and patrol boats had been a slight deterrent, but the _Dragonray_ carried impressive armaments, and out weighted the smaller vessels by hundreds of tons. She carried over thirty power armored troopers, half SAMAS, and NG Redhawk's for topside combat. The other half of her power armor compliment were composed of a Aquatech Orca 50 and NG Beachstormer armor. The commanders of the power armor troopers were a pair of brothers from Free Quebec, who had deserted along with their suits of Glitter boy armor.

But now looking at the cargo he was more then a bit angry. Where their was supposed to be some four hundred plus suits of power armor, he found passengers. So many that they must have been packed on top of each other. Looking at them, scared and frightened, he knew. Their wasn't much of value on the ship. The passengers were mostly middle class schmucks who had probably been headed to one of the new port towns springing up around the great lakes. He shook his head in annoyance, this was their first score in a couple of months, and the looks on many of his crews faces told him, they wanted something worthwhile to take.

The number of women on board also told him what his men were considering worthwhile payment. He looked at Tusks and she quietly brought him up to speed.

" Captain there's nothing much in the way of cred on this tub. We've gathered up the credsticks, jewelry, and what little valuables we can find on board, but it isn't nearly what the crew expected. The crew expects you to allow them to take a slave or two by way of payment. Maybe take this tub in for salvage. We can get at least a easy million. Even better if they pay us ten percent for it, that's three million by my figures." she said. Her eyes told him how much she disliked the idea of letting the men enslave and rape these women. A former slave herself, she hated slaves with a passion approaching an obsession.

Captain Cross nodded his head. Pawning the ship might be a worthwhile venture. They were only a few hours sail from Portsmouth by easy sail, an hour under full steam. A notorious pirate haven along Lake Erie, Portsmouth was one of many new such towns appearing along the lakes. They could probably find a buyer for the ship in a few days, he had a contact in Amtrans, and the company was always looking for ships on the cheap.

Cross disliked taking slaves. For a whole multitude of reasons, he also disliked the idea of a man raping a woman. He had half a mind to simply deny the crew's request. But a simple glance around told him this wasn't a very smart alternative. He'd have a mutiny on his hands, and while he wouldn't mind getting rid of the more violent and bloodthirsty members of his crew, they outnumbered the more loyal amongst it.

No his only refusal was the fact that more then a few of those women had children. Captain Cross had few morals, but amongst the few he did have, besides demanding absolute loyalty, was that kids and clergy didn't get hurt. That included enslaving them to his mind.

Tusks knew about the captains refusal to hurt or enslave youngsters, and their parents because of that. As a former slave of the splurgoth, she thought this an admirable trait in the man. She knew the captain wouldn't allow the men to take any of the mothers as concubines. She also knew that more then a few of the men had already decided on a favorite, and more then a few of them were mothers. This was going to be problematic. Especially Bones, a new hire, he hadn't worked his way up the totem pole. This however didn't impair him much. The man, if you could call him that, was a weasel and he was doing his best to worm his way into the hearts of the crew. Tusks figured the little bastard planned to try and mutiny against the captain. Worse she figured that more then half the crew would join with him. There was easily two or three women to each man on board the freighter, and the kids would fetch a fair price at market.

Captain Cross wasn't a large man, being only six feet in height. He wasn't heavily muscled, although he was well toned. He was young, twenty three, amongst the youngest Pirate captains on the lakes. He had long brown hair, and wore typical western clothing, he was after all from Lone Star. Although only a few people knew this detail of his life. He wore his Maverick riding armor, with its armored stetson. Over this he wore a western duster, that was also armored. His armor was a deep navy blue, with gold piping and highlights. Not unlike the old US army cavalry uniforms of the old west. At his hips was a complicated quad holster setup, two to a side. He carried his old trusted Colt .38 navy's and a set of Wilks Remi Walker pistols. He was roguishly handsome, with a goatee, and mustache. His looks and charm won him more then a few nights with many a woman. Unknown to many, the captain was covered in tattoos, with nearly every inch of his upper body having something on it. His lower body had more then a few as well, some were from his time as a Pecos bandit. Others were from after he started his career as a pirate.

Tusks considered him her husband, and she thought of them as exclusively belonging to each other. But the Captain had never thought of them as such. The was largely because Tusks had never told him. She tried not to get to jealous when the captain took another woman to his bed, but there had been more then a few times when Tusks had followed one of his nightly conquests home and explained to her the consequences of bedding her husband. These women tended to be the most beautiful, or most persistent at following the captain after their affair. She would be damned if she was going to let some two bit hussy take her husband away. Even if he didn't think of her as his wife.

Captain Cross raised a hand, getting his crews attention. The men quickly focused on the Captain, waiting to hear his words.

" Aright. I know y'all has a powerful notion to be taken these here ladyfolk back to yawls bunk and getting a might better acquainted. But as y'all know we gots some rules in this here outfit. The chitlins goes free, and that includes they momma's. We'll put'em in a life boat and steer'em towards shore. The crew can likewise find their way to a life boat, or they can take a dirtnap. I ain't none to caring about that." he said to them.

Beside the captain a redheaded woman sat on her knees, holding a small girl, no more then four or five years old. The woman wore a simple cotton dress, and hugged the child who was likewise attired close to her. Both wept openly, and the captain was a bit upset that his men had treated them so badly as to make them cry. The woman was more then a little beautiful, with all the right curves, and pleasing figure. The girl was red haired as well, and Cross figured her for the woman's daughter.

Behind the woman stood Bones, the rodent faced weasel of a man. He grabbed a handful of the woman's pretty red hair and yanked her head back. Leaning down he licked her cheek as he looked at the captain.

" I want this one here. I'll dump the brat into a life boat, but her momma is going to keep me company until I tire of her." he said. He eyed the woman lustfully. To her credit she didn't weep anymore at his threat of raping her.

To Cross that just proved she had some spirit to her. Most redheads did, and this woman seemed no different. Cross shook his head though at Bones's words. " You knew and agreed to my rules when you signed on. You can't be trying to change'em just cause you found yourself a pretty little thing and the rules say shes off limits."

Bones shook his head, looking around he saw many heads nodding in agreement with the captains words. But just as many were waiting to hear what he would say in response. Most of these men seemed to have found themselves some pretty young mothers as well, and they didn't want to have to give up their prize just because the captain had some strange hang up about kids. They were pirates, and pirates had no room for such foolish and romantic ideas.

Bones turned back to the captain. " When I signed on, it was with the understanding that I'd be getting paid regularly. We ain't seen no pay in over two months. Therefore I say hang the rules, I'm taking my pretty little wench here as my back pay." he said menacingly. He noticed more then a few heads nodding in agreement with his words.

Encouraged by their support, Bones allowed more then a little bit of cockiness to enter his voice. " Besides, a captain who don't pay his crew risks not being captain no more." he said threateningly. His face a wide, toothless grin, since many of them were missing. He laughed at his own threat, thinking the captain would undoubtedly back down and allow them their prize.

Most captains would. Pirates tended to be a democratic bunch, and a captain who didn't listen to his crews desires, or who became to tyrannical didn't last. The crews tended to mutiny, or some horrible fate befell the captain.

But Cross wasn't one of those captains. He was, as he had always been. A Pecos Bandit. And the leader of a bandit gang didn't tolerate no backtalk. Quicker then a blink of an eye Cross had drawn his right hand side Colt navy and fired two shots. Each of those bullets took Bones in an eye, blowing what little brains he had out the back of his exploding skull, and sending his body tumbling over the rail. He spun lazily head over feet several times before smacking into the water, and then sinking like a stone, weighed down by his armor.

Cross holstered his shooting iron swiftly giving it a twirl as he did so. Many thought him a wannabe, but few realized he was the real McCoy a New West gunslinger, and a skilled one at that. He wasn't the fastest gun in the west, but he was still faster then most people had ever seen. He eyed those members of the crew who had agreed with Bones, his eyes telling them plainly, he'd happily shoot the lot of them if they so much as looked at him cross-eyed. Cross demanded absolute loyalty from his crew. In return he gave the same, and did right by them, and that was what mattered.

Finally after all the former supporters looked away, or avoided his stare he asked. " Anyone else thinkin' of re-negotiating their contracts?" his voice was menacing. All the more so for having just shot a man casually, and expertly.

All the crew shook their heads, and Cross nodded. Then in the silence that had fallen over the ship, he decided to get this overwith. Turning he yelled across the plank, " Jess! Get your skinny rear over here now girlie!"

He waited for a small dark haired woman to run across the gangplank. A toolbox in her hand, and grease stains on her coveralls. She stopped as she approached him and saluted. " Aye Captain!" she said loudly.

Cross rolled his eyes at the girl. 'Jess' was the oldest daughter of a former pirate who had retired. Jess's real name was Jessica Martinez, a raven haired, willowy girl of nineteen years. Her father had been a pirate, and a fairly good one. He had used his pay over the years to send his daughter to a fine college in Lazlo. There she had studied mechanical engineering, having always been a gearhead.

Ramon had wanted better for her then the life of a scallywag. But his daughter had floored him when after graduation she begged him to get her hired on to a pirate crew. He and she had argued long and hard, until finally he had given up and agreed. Of all the crews who sailed the great lakes, only one had a captain that Ramon trusted with his baby girl, although not her virtue. Cross was a notorious lady's man, but he was also a notoriously trustworthy sort, for a pirate. Cross defined his terms and lived by them. In the end, Ramon decided that there were worst sorts that she could hook up with, who would do more then steal his baby girls virtue.

Ramon had approached Cross about hiring on Jessica. He had negotiated the terms of his daughters service, and Cross had agreed, his former chief engineer had taken some unlucky torpedo shrapnel during a tussle with the CS navy. Cross needed a skilled mechanic to help oversee repairs to the ship, so he had happily agreed when Ramon asked him. He had thought maybe the girl could provide his own gears with some servicing, but upon seeing her, had decided that just wasn't the case. Jess was just to wide eyed, to inexperienced, she'd have happily greased them for him, but he was afraid to find out he'd been the first that she'd done so to. The idea of being followed around by a lovestruck girl, just not appealing to the man. Since then Cross had done his best to ignore Jess's mad infatuation with him.

But she had proven a more then skilled mechanic, although the girl often found the actual business of piracy to be too bloody for her. She was a bit squeamish and often passed out at the sight of blood. After fishing her out of the brine on more then one occasion, he had excused her from coming on board prize ships until after the killing was all done.

Jess looked at the captain awaiting orders, she had the idea that pirates were like the CS navy, saluting and such. Shaking his head at her youthful idealism, he waved at the ship. " Look over the engines, and make this here tub ready to sail." he said to her.

She grinned from ear to ear, " Aye,Aye captain!" she then saluted again before running towards the engine compartment. Most freighters were built along similar lines, and this one proved no different.

Cross waved at the passengers. " Each man can keep for himself one woman, without child. And I don't wanna hear no more about it. The crew, and womanfolk with children goes into a life raft. Women and children first. Snap to." he yelled.

The crew instantly became a flurry of activity, and Tusks directed it, yelling out for the lifeboats to be filled. They had already wasted to much time on this tub, in this one spot. While she was sure the Wild Weasels were blocking any radio distress call, she didn't want to take the chance. CS aircraft, along with other nations could reach them fairly quickly.

Cross turned to move across the gang plank when the red haired woman who Bones had wanted to take as his ,put a hand to his coat. " A word captain." she said, her voice thick with a brogue he had never heard before.

He looked at her in confusion, one of his dark eyebrows arched. " Ma'am I ain't givin you back your trinkets. We gotta get paid same as anyone else." he said. Not coldly, but not warmly either.

The woman shook her head, " I have nothing valuable that would interest ye captain." she said in that same strange accent. She pushed aside an errant lock of her beautiful red hair, revealing a creamy white neck covered in freckles.

Cross shrugged, deciding to hear what the woman wanted. He nodded for her to explain herself. Besides, he liked looking at her.

" I wanta ask ye, about joining ye crew." she said. Her words shocked him. He'd never had a mark ask to join the crew.

Blinking in disbelief he shook his head. " Ma'am I ain't lookin to take on a new hire. I reckon if it's work your wanting, you'd find a saloon a better choice." he said to her.

The woman shook her head, fresh tears springing to her eyes, " Please captain! I'm more then a wee bit handy with a mop and broom. I canna keep your ship clean. I'm a fair seamstress, so I canna be mending ye and ye crews cloths. I canna cook, and run a kitchen, and I canna sing and dance, and provide that type of entertainment ta ye crew. So long as they don't expect it ta go afurther." her voice beseeching.

Cross blinked again. " Ma'am I aint got no need for no maid on board my ship." he said. Although it would be nice for some of the crews cabins to be a might bit cleaner. To many of the men thought this was the time of the ancient mariners and didn't shower, shave or wash their cloths. The ship having a large laundry room, he didn't understand this.

She looked at the small girl in her arms, tears flowing more freely from her eyes. She sat starring at the child for some time before speaking again. She looked back at him, " Take me on as part of ye crew, and I promise not a night goes bye that ye be lonely, or wanting for a woman's company. I may not have the experience ye find in other lasses. But I'll never tell ye no, and will do anything ye want of me. But only ye!" she said desperately.

Cross shook his head. This woman must be in some sort of trouble, something she needed to get away from. A pirate ship might not be the worse place for her. He stood thinking for a few moments. He was starring at her as he thought, although truthfully his eyes weren't really seeing her. The woman unbuttoned a couple of the top buttons on her dress, trying to provide him with a better view of her cleavage. From what he could see, she had ample bosom. But Cross felt no desire to take a woman who was desperate and in need. To his mind, it would be no different then raping her, and Cross was not that kind of man. He was many things, not the least of which was a thief and a scoundrel, but he wasn't a rapist.

Besides, whatever trouble she was in might come looking for her. It was a stretch that they'd find her and the ship, but the excitement that would ensue if they did intrigued him. Cross was at heart a dare-devil, he thrived on challenges, on testing his abilities against others. Besides, whoever came looking for her might have a bit of swag that would make it profitable, as well as fun.

Cross shook his head, " I suppose that the little one bein' able to stay on board is a condition of your employment?" he asked, not really needing confirmation, but asking anyway.

She nodded and wiped at her eyes, she hadn't wanted to have to offer herself like this, but if it got her on board it was worth the shame of whoring herself out she thought.

Cross sighed, " A pirate ship ain't no place for a child." he said to her, his voice sounding resigned.

She shook her head. " All I ask is ye tell ye crew to be kind to me wee daughter, and meself. I agreed to be ye.......companion, not the whole crews. I suppose ye'd be wanting me ta stay in ye bed at night which be fine. Me daughter sleeps through the night and be a heavy sleeper. If ye have something ta make a little noise ta drown out the sounds o' our passion though, that'd be appreciated." she said, her voice filled with more then a little fear. Although looking at the handsome man, she could have offered herself to far worse. He remained her of the models on the magic box her former husband had watched nightly. The men in those ads had been handsome and fine, and looking at the captain, she imagined he was built like many of those men she used to watch blushing moving about on the screen. Her husband use to tease her about them, telling her that such men didn't really exist. But looking at the man before her she thought that her husband might have been wrong.

Cross chuckled, " The crew already knows to keep their hands off ya, and to be nice to the youngen, least I have to have a talk with'em. But I ain't needing no companion as ya put it. Since ya won't be doin' no fightin, I'm only gonna give ya a half share for the first two months. We'll see how well ya do after that, if'n your as good as ya say, we'll pay ya more." he said.

She blinked several times, " So ye won't be needing me ta......service ye?" she asked confusedly, she had figured this had been what had changed his mind to allow her and her daughter to stay. She wasn't a vain woman, but she knew she was fairly attractive, she had decided to use that to get them passage. Even if she had felt more then a little shame at having to tempt his baser desires.

Cross shook his head. " Ya said you was a fair maid. I mighta spoke to soon when I said I didn't have need for a one. You'll be cleaning the crews bunks, the galley, the heads and the officer's mess hall. I expect ya to do the laundry for the crew to boot. Since our Cookie only knows how to nuke food, or open a can, I'll be expectin ya to cook a few suppers a week for the officers. The rest of the ship the crew's responsible for, and ya won't be needin to clean it. Ya and the little one will take ya meals in the officer's mess as well. Ain't no way I'm lettin' ya'll eat with them animals." he told her.

She nearly hugged him for his generosity, but figured the pirate captain wouldn't like that. Smiling she nodded her head, " I'll do me best captain. Ye won't be regretting this I promise ye." she said to him happily.

He nodded, " I'm gonna have ya two bunk with Jess. Her and Tusks have been the only womenfolk on the ship. Tusks shares a cabin with me, so that leaves only Jess with room for y'all. Soon as she comes back through I'll have her show you to the cabin. Word to the wise though. Your a pretty woman, and this here is a crew of scoundrels and misfits. Don't be going about the ship in anything to revealing, thems men are more animals then human, and most won't bat an eye lash over taking ya against your will if they thinks your teasin'em or offerin." his voice held a note of warning.

She understood his warning and nodded, he could after all only do so much to protect her from the misfits. And while she was sure he'd shoot the man that robbed her of her virtue, she was also sure that wouldn't save her from the act. She re-buttoned her dress, shaking her head, " This is the only cloths I own captain." she said.

He shrugged, not finding any temptation in her dress, which covered her from neck to her feet. " Just as well, when we get to port and Jess and ya are shopping, you remember my words." he said.

She shook her head. " I haven't got any money Captain, so I can't be shoppin now canna I?" she gave him a wink to show her words were in jest.

He shrugged, " Since y'all are crew, ya can get back your valuables. We don't steal from each other." he said seriously.

" I don't have any valuables captain. All I and me wee daughter own is the cloths on our backs." she told him cheerfully.

Cross shook his head, thinking this woman was strange indeed. But he shrugged, " Well like I said you'll get a half share of the plunder after we make port. The Quartermaster will be telling us soon how much we made off this heist. Things however ain't looking to bright for us in way of loot. But if we get what we're thinking we can for this here tub in Portsmouth, then you'll get at least a thousand to two thousand dollars."

She smiled widely at his words. " I wouldn't have the first clue what ta do with that amount of money captain."

He leaned in close, " Soon as you get enough you buy yourself a lady's palm pistol, and a stiletto. Along with a garter holster for each, and ya keep'em on you at all times." he said, the tone of his voice stressing his concern.

She took his words seriously, for he had spoken them in such a manner. She told him she would do so. Then she took up her daughter and watched as Jess came running over smiling.

Jess saluted again and Cross could only chuckle. " The ships all ready to go captain, the engines weren't damaged in the boarding actions and we can get underway immediately." she grinned from ear to ear.

Despite her enthusiasm Cross just wasn't in as happy a mood as she. He wasn't fond of slave taking, finding the practice distasteful. If it wouldn't have meant having to kill half his crew, he wouldn't have allowed it, but his refusal would have forced him to do so.

Cross didn't tell Jess this, figuring the innocent, wide eyed girl would most likely burst into tears at the thought of what was transpiring. Instead he waved at the woman and girl beside him, " These two are joining the crew. They'll be bunking with you since you've got yerself a big ole four bunk cabin, and no one to share it with. Show'em where it is, and help'em get squared away." he told Jess, who nodded and made to wave them to follower her when Cross had a thought.

" Whata we call ya two?" he asked the woman.

She smiled " I be Moira, and this be me daughter Lorna." she said happily. Then Jess lead her across the gangplank, explaining some of the ships layout on their way.

_The Dragonray _was a large sized destroyer, superior to a CS James Bay class destroyer. She held some four hundred sailors, and forty power armor pilots, along with a squadron of Rocketcycles, and a Dragonfly She was faster then the CS ships, and she carried more armaments. But she was lighter armored, and could carry less cargo, as well as supplies. She was an Attack/Escort destroyer, out of the shipyards of Northern Gun, and she was a formidable foe on the sea's. Her increased speed and maneuverability often allowed her to out maneuver enemy torpedoes, which were notoriously unreliable at any but short distances.

Her armaments centered around her fore section. Four Multi-type torpedo tubes just under the water line in her bow. These tubes were modular and could fire any type of torpedo, from the largest, to the smallest, save for mini-torpedoes. On the top foredeck was four five inch cannons, mounted in two turrets. Each turret featured a pair of box style mini-missile launchers, meant primarily to defend the turrets against enemy missiles, and aircraft.

Her mid-ship section mounted only a quad set of 20mm energy cannons, although the tower section mounted five box style multi-shot mini-missile launchers. Directly aft of the tower and bridge she mounted a pair of Multi-type box style missile launchers, capable of firing the heavier missiles. At her stern, on either side was mounted a pair of depth charge launchers. The stern also held the two helipads, that the Dragonfly attack hover vehicle, and twelve rocketcycles were launched and serviced.

Scattered across the ship were more 20mm energy cannons, all with their own gunner and targeting computer. Eight of these defense guns were mounted in the fore, four on each side midship, and six aft. These short ranged weapons were used against patrol boats, and other small, fast moving targets.

She was four hundred feet in length, and nearly sixty across. She sat a good twenty feet deep in the water, with about another eighteen, to twenty feet above water. Jess told Moira that the _Dragonray _was amongst the most feared ships on the lakes. As they moved to the tower section, and the hatch that lead down into the ship, a pair of crew were lowering the colors. The Captain, owing to his upbringing in the New West and Lone Star had insisted on using the old Jolly Rodger as the ships colors. Many pirate crews made their own form of the colors, but Cross thought it best to stick to tradition, and it was the classical crossed swords and skull Jolly Rodger.

Jess told Moira to watch her head, despite being a massive vessel, She was still a warship, and the corridors were cramped. Moira ducked down as Jess lead the way to their now shared cabin, Jess was a happy go lucky person by default. A part of her up bringing in Lazlo, she just didn't see the bad in others, or in life. As the two women made their way to the cabin Jess badgered Moira with questions, happily telling bits and pieces of her own life story without much concern.

Jess had decorated the armored steel door, with its military style look, with several paper star's and moon shapes. These were all made from bright pastel colors, complete with glittering writing and other little girlish details. This gave the door the look of belonging to a very young woman, and Moira wondered at Jess's age. The cabin was near the rear of the ship, on the third deck, the last in a long line of cabins. The hall way echoed with the sounds of the engines, and Jess quickly opened the door, waving Moira and her daughter in. Lorna, was holding her hands over her ears in an attempt to block out the noise.

Moira quickly entered the room, hoping it was quieter then the outside hallway. To her surprise when the door closed the engine noise became only a dull droning noise, easily forgotten. The cabin, like the door was decorated in many pastel colors, posters of several bare chested young men, and little cartoonish animals.

Jess blushed as Moira's eyes scanned the room. The posters were of several of Jess's favorite musicians, and actors. Boybands and eyecandy as the type of men were referred to as. " I'll take down the posters." Jess said quickly.

Moira shook her head, she found more then a few of the men depicted handsome. " It's fine dearie." Moira answered. They reminded her of the men on the magic box in those underwear ads.

Jess smiled, she hadn't really wanted to take the posters down, but would have done so if the older woman asked her. Jess started showing her around the room, offering her and her daughter the set of bunks on the opposite side as hers. She slept on the bottom bunk, closest to the engine section, she loved the sound of the engine, and could tell just by the sound of it if something was wrong with her baby she told Moira.

Moira smiled, not really understanding what the younger woman meant. To her it was just noise. Moira continued to scan the room, a habit of hers from long on the run. Lorna had gotten out of her mothers embrace and was looking about the room wide eyed. Jess had several interesting devices in the room, from a laptop computer, to large flatscreen LCD TV. The TV, or magic box as Moira referred to them as, was mounted to the bulkhead and she had a video game system connected. Jess showed Lorna this, putting in a game where one played the role of a cute cartoon animal. Lorna was completely enchanted with the thing, and would be enthralled by it for days. She happily squealed, laughed and chattered to herself as she played the game, telling her little onscreen bunny character to run right.

Jess smiled brightly as she watched the little girl playing the game. She reached out a hand and playfully stroked the girls hair. Turning to Moira she asked, " How old is your little _nina_?"

Moira was a bit confused by this term, but she figured it meant daughter or something similar, " Lorna will be five this coming October." she said proudly.

Jess smiled, looking at the girl she asked, " You to don't have much do you?" Moira shook her head, telling her they only had the cloths on their backs.

Jess thought this a dreadful thing, " Every _nina_, needs a doll." she said sadly. Then smiling she walked to a large trunk mounted into the bulkhead. Opening this she began to rummage around until she found a small handmade doll. She took it into her hands lovingly, as if it was a real child, gently arranging its yarn hair into place. She moved back to Lorna, and knelt down showing the child the doll.

Lorna's eyes widened at the sight of the little ragdoll. Jess held it up lovingly. " This is Esmeralda. She was my best friend when I was a little _nina. _My _aboletta_, made her for me a long time since then I've grown up, and just don't have the time to spend with her. Do you think you can spend time with her? She gets very lonely now a days."

Lorna nodded her little head solemnly_, _lovingly taking the little ragdoll, with its brightly colored dress, and head full of black yarn hair. Lorna sat down on the metallic floor, cradling the doll in her lap, as if it was a real child. Picking up the controller again she happily told Esmeralda what it was that she was doing, talking to the doll as if it was a person.

Jess's kindness made Moira smile softly, since coming to this land few had been so kind as the dark haired woman. As Jess stood up Moira decided to try and get to know the younger woman better, who seemed incredibly open anyway.

" Canna I ask ye a question lass?" Moira began. To Jess, who was typically an open book anyway, this was fine.

Jess happily consented to Moira's request and the older woman smiled, " How old is ye? Ye seem a wee bit young for this life." she said politely.

Jess laughed lightly, and sat down in the small chair beside her bunk. From a compartment in the desk there she took out a small handful of candybars. She opened one and handed it to Lorna, who squealed in delight, and happily took the offered chocolate from Jess's hand. Jess handed Moira another, then opening her own, she answered Moira.

" I'm nineteen. I just graduated from the University of Technology, in Lazlo about seven months ago. My Papa was a pirate, and it was pirate pay that put me through school. I've always been fascinated with life on board ship, and pirates in general. Poppa thinks I'm _loco _for wanting to come out to sea like this. He thinks I should have stayed in Lazlo, or Relic, but since all the Tolkeen refugees showed up, their isn't much work to be found there." she shrugged her small shoulders, " Besides land is just so boring. I love being at sea, and a pirate like poppa." she finished.

Moira smiled at the younger woman's words, although the mention of Tolkeen made her a bit sad. She took a small bite of the offered chocolate bar, and was in bliss for a moment. Back home chocolate was rare, to unknown. People here in North America didn't realize how lucky they were she thought to herself.

Jess decided to turn the conversation around, and smiling she asked, " So how old are you _chica_?" Moira chuckled, again not knowing some of the words her roommate was using, but being able to get a general idea what was meant.

Moira took another bite of chocolate, deciding to spend some of her money on these when she was paid. Along with some cloths for her and Lorna. She covered her mouth though as she answered Jess. " I'm not but twenty five, although ta tell the truth I fell much older then that lass." she said laughing lightly.

Jess smiled, " So you were about my age when you had your _nina_?" Jess had to cover her own mouth as she spoke. She was excited that the older woman was warming to her, the idea of sharing a cabin with someone who was quiet and sullen bothered her more then a bit. It reminded her of her first roommate in college, a over serious senior, who had often yelled at Jess for her exuberance and general ease at her studies.

Moira nodded happily, her red hair swishing as she did so. " Oh aye! I was but a year older though. My master favored me heavily at the time, so it was only natural that I became with child." she said without thinking.

Jess's eyes widened, " You were a slave?" she asked, sadness and something else in her voice.

Moira hadn't meant to reveal this, she didn't like talking of her life before her escape. But now the milk was spilled as her mother would have said. She nodded, " Aye lass. Taken in the Tolkeen war after me husband was killed by Coalition Troops. He was a good mah, not even a solider or magic user. A farmer he was,but he was a few years older then me." she said sadly.

Jess felt infinitely sad at the woman's words. She knew that many of the crew had just taken slaves from the prize ship, and she hated that. Slavery was an abhorrent practice she thought, reducing people to little more then animals. But Jess had, upon deciding to become a pirate, decided she would have to take the good aspects of her career choice with the bad.

" So your from Tolkeen? I've never heard your accent amongst the other people I've met form there. What barony are you from?" Jess was trying to steer the conversation away from this talk of slavery. It made her both sad, and uncomfortable.

Moira laughed again, covering her mouth as she had just taken another bite of her chocolate. " Oh aye lass! I imagine ye haven't! Me accent is what is called the ole' Scottish brogue! I don't imagine many people here in North America have heard it afore!"

Jess's eye's went wide " Scottish, as in like Scotland? That's all the way across the Atlantic!" she asked amazed. Jess couldn't have hid her excitement from her voice if she had tried. The news that her new roommate was from Europe was just to exciting. Jess found she had hundreds of questions for the other woman, about everything from what she had done there, to where she grew up.

Moira laughed all the harder for the younger woman's interest and excitement. " Aye lass. I was born and raised in the moors of Scotland, near Edinburgh. But when I found meself here in North America, I lived in the Barony of Riverdeen."

Jess smiled at her words. " How did you come to North America?" she asked wide eyed and full of interest.

Moira smiled shaking her head, " Quite by accident let me tell ye. I was out agathering me dah's flock o' sheep when a bloody ley line storm a' happened. A rift opened, and dumped me on me bum! The mah who would be me husband found me and took me back to his wee cottage. At first I thought he meant to take me virtue if ye get me meanin'. But he was the perfect gentlemah, he was about the age of me dah. He explained to me where I was. He told me he'd get the money together and try an get a wizard to send me home to me mah, and dah. I was as ye can imagine a bit dumbstruck by all thah, and he did his best to help me adjust to the differences between this land and me own." she said smiling. Her husband was a good man, a better man then any she'd met since.

Jess's face took on a look of sadness. " That was before the war huh? A lot of the crew, and all the officer's fought in Tolkeen. The captain and Tracy did, they sometimes tell stories of their time there. Changed'em all from what my poppa told me." she said again sadly.

Moira bobbed her head, " Aye lass. The CS destroyed more then just people's lives, but their souls as well." she said sadly. The CS was as bad as any monster that crawled from a rift, but they pretended to be some sort of savior for the world, or humanity. But the truth was they didn't even care about humanity, unless it was of a specific mindset, and willing to forgo basic human decency.

The two woman went silent as each pondered their own thoughts. The CS had taken so much, from so many, and neither thought that this would end. Rumor was that the CS was in some serious economic trouble. If the scuttlebutt was right, then the CS would be even more dangerous, like a wounded animal it would lash out at any who threatened it. And their were plenty that threatened it, from the Pecos Bandits, to the Federation of magic, to Atlantis itself. The last one scared Jess more then any of the others. Everyone knew Atlantis was the home of monsters who thought of people the same as a human might a cow. Dinner.


	3. Chapter two

Chapter two:

Shady deals.

Olivia picked up the newest files from the ocean port of New Jersey. Amtrans largest open water port, and recently opened. The port was built some thirty miles south of the old American city of the same name, far enough from Madhaven to not be effected by the disturbing aura that surrounded the ruins. But close enough for the salvage operations the company was performing in the area.

The new New Jersey was only just finished, and populated primarily by company personal, as well as their families. The port had been built as a way station for ships headed to and from, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Cuba and Europe. As well as the companies dealings in the American southeast. It also served as the center for salvage operations along the eastern seaboard. Those salvage operations were going well, extremely well.

The newest report spoke of a cache of old US Glitter boy's, US SAMAS, and a variant SAMAS made of the same material as GB armor. There had been nearly two hundred of each suit, along with twenty Glitter Boys of unknown type. Two different models that were apparently variants on the original design. The armor had been sitting inside a secured and water tight container inside a former US Navy super carrier. While the carrier had been a bust, they had located several compartments that had remained sealed all this time. Even more exciting then finding the power armor, was the discovery of several technical manuals, detailing the servicing of those suits. The engineer who had written the report estimated that production of all three suits could begin in a matter of months, if suitable manufacturing centers could be located.

Olivia smiled, the production of those units would make them billions. Actual production would have to be turned over to Bandito Arms. Amtrans just didn't have the necessary facilities to produce such robotic designs. Nor did Amtrans have any desire to build them. That was why they had sister companies. Companies whose business was not shipping and receiving. Bandito Arms had already been selling several hundred Mexican made Glitter Boys, but demand for the venerable, and nearly indestructible armor was at an all time high. With the discovery of the technical data on those suits, Bandito Arms could begin production in a matter of weeks. She made a note to have a handful of each type of suit, along with the technical journals sent to Bandito Arms primary manufacturing center in Nevada.

She continued to scan the report, she noted the increase in Splurgoth attacks on the port town, this bothered her more then a bit. The Splurgoths Atlantis was perhaps the greatest danger to the world, the filthy alien things from that land made it a habit to interfere with the native people. Amtrans had tried to conduct some business with those aliens, after the company had first came online, but that had been a bust. The Splurgoth just had no understanding of how to conduct business like humans. Things like breech of contract, and contract enforcement just not meaning much to the things. Amtrans had been forced to deal through intermediaries, such as the undead govern Caribbean league.

The last encounter with the Splurgoth involved one of their massive 'Ark' ships. The harbor had been damaged, and many of the ports clients had received extensive damage as well. That damage meant insurance payouts, and a loss of profits. Nothing angered her more then losing money. Her superior's were asking her to develop some sort of strategy to deter the Splurgoths aggressive actions. But she was at a lost, Securetech investigators hadn't discovered a motive for the attack, other then the crew of the Ark had been intrigued by the port and moved to investigate. The sight of the massive vessel had frightened more then a few of the crews in the harbor, as well as the port defenders. Someone had opened fire and the battle had ensued. Amtrans had never built the harbor to resist such an attack, it was more of a civilian port then a military one. Therefore the Ark had been able to perform signifigant damage to the harbor, before the combined firepower of the docked ships, and harbor defeated it. Recovery efforts were underway to study the ships remains, so it may not be all for nothing. Already Aquatech, another sister corporation had identified several weak points in the Ark ships design. That information was being distributed to all the Big Ten's harbor and port defenders.

She put the report down, and turned her chair to look at the large holographic map of the western hemisphere. New dots that represented new towns seemed to appear daily, then disappeared just as quickly. She waved her hand and brought into focus the town she currently occupied. Port Harbor, on the Pirate Kingdom of Montreal. The holodisplay showed the city, and island it stood on in multi-colored segments, not unlike a pie. Those that were black weren't currently owned by anyone. Those that were red, were currently under the protection of the citizen groups. The yellow segments were those under the protection/ownership of the idiot pirate king 'Sea Dog'. The man was a brute and a lout with the imagination of a namesake. The blue sections of the island were those currently owned, maintained and operated by Amtrans.

Due to Olivia's predatory business senses, most of that pie was blue now. Her superiors were impressed with her progress so far. Amtrans had big plans for the pirate kingdom, but in order to bring that about, the island had to have a good foundation. Amtrans had found that the island kingdom was to chaotic to conduct business. The board had assigned Olivia to bring about those plans. She had started with a section of the island that wasn't inhabited. While it had taken a lot of labor to clear the section of the former debris of the ancient cities, as well as the forest that had grown, that labor had been performed by what the company referred to as credit workers. Workers who had agreed to the company's offer to turn them into labor and construction 'Borgs in exchange for a five year service term. The 'Borgs were little more then slaves, who worked eighteen to twenty hours a day, performing labor that was absolutely brutal. They received a pittance salary, which barely let them eek by in the company store.

Due to the innate durability and tireless endurance of their bionic bodies these workers could maintain a level of quality beyond what a normal worker ever could. They had built for the company here an impressive port, along with a administration building and headquarters. The administration building towered over the island, like the skyscrapers of the time before the rifts. The building held such diverse departments as human resources, administration, mail room, cartography, acquisitions, and shipping, being but a few. Four thousand company personal worked in the building, and it was a place of constant activity and work.

The 'Borgs had built the company housing, along with its defensive wall to keep out the riff-raff of the rest of the island. The massive nuclear power plant, company stores, park and other locations useful to the company for its personal.

That had been five years ago, back in 104 PA, but now as of mid 109 PA the company owned nearly 70% of the island. Olivia figured she could get the remainder by years end, or shortly thereafter.

The island still served as a hub and port for pirates. Once the company completely bought out the island, they planned to rename it Freeport. Since the company thought nothing of purchasing illicit goods, or slaves, pirates flocked to the ports run by the company. Amtrans however didn't deal with those pirates that raided their own ships. The company's predatory nature served it well, many nations were flocking to the company to secure shipping, the company's main focus. Since Amtrans ships tended to make their destination intact and complete with cargoes, the added expense was considered worth it.

Amtrans had big plans for the island, not the least of which was recruitment for a privateer navy. The best pirate ships and fleets were being offered employment by the company as escorts, and defenders for company operations throughout the world. Each ship was paid a certain amount per month, as well as repairs and supplies. The crews were allowed to keep, and sell any plunder they might acquire during their service with the company. Many of the best crews had already signed on with the company. Part of those crews she knew would be needed to defend the companies holdings. Pirate crews made some of the best naval troops available, assuming you could find the more mercenary professional ones over the thieving slackers.

As sat staring at the map, and pondering over her plans, her intercom buzzed at her. The buzzing pulled her from her revere, and she waved the map to resume its previous display of the western hemisphere. She punched the intercom's talk button. " Go ahead." she said a hint of annoyance at being disturbed in her voice.

Her secretaries voice, another indentured credit worker sounded through the little speaker. " Mrs. Francesca, your 1030 meeting is here." The secretary sounded more then a bit nervous, knowing the identity of her meeting, she could understand why.

Olivia pushed down these thoughts, no use in showing any fear, these people were like wolves, and it would only encourage them. " Send her in." she said through the speaker.

Olivia was a beautiful woman, her vast fortune allowed her to take advantage of all the new technology that had recently become widespread. Genetherepy gave her the look and energy of a woman in her mid-twenty's, and she was well over fifty. According to the new research she could remain this way with regular treatments for at least a hundred years before she had to go on to her thirties again. Cosmetic cybernetics gave her an impressive bust, her cyber-breasts were the best money could buy. Both being brand new gene tailored bio-ware systems, as were her lips which were full in the way that drove men crazy.

Her eyes were brand new bio-ware multieyes, with mood altering color patterns. She could with a thought see into the infrared spectrum, focus onto an object not unlike a hawk to clearly see a mouse at two miles distance. She could also widen her pupils and see in the dark not unlike cats. The pupils and iris's of her eyes changed with her mood. Since that mood was currently one of annoyance they appeared to be filled with lightning, and the pupils had contracted not unlike a serpents.

She checked her make-up in a small mirror on her desk, as well as her short spiky black hair. She kept it in the style of many company women. Short so that it didn't interfere with her work, yet strongly feminine in its cut and style. A woman's power haircut as it was referred to. Her dark skin was perfectly smooth, and flawless. She stood up adjusting her suit and skirt so that the lines were also perfect, and unwrinkled.

Then she sat back down putting on a look of command and confidence. The double dark stained oak doors opened and a woman in a uniform entered. It was a uniform that had struck fear in more then a few people, but Olivia was unimpressed.

The woman was a dark haired woman of mixed ancestry. Her light mocha colored skin, and blue eyes pointing to the fact of her mixed blood. She had both her greatcoat, and her hat under her left arm. Her blue black uniform, complete with its red armband with deaths head and polished dress shoes showed her a by the book woman. She walked forward briskly stopping in front of Olivia's darkly stained oak desk. A perfect match to the doors, and other wood work in the office.

The Coalition officer looked at her disdainfully, and Olivia returned it. This woman might be a important pawn in the CS chess set, but she was still a pawn. Olivia waved at a soft leather chair in front of her desk. The Coalition woman snorted, " I won't be here that long." she said, her voice deep and use to command.

Olivia shrugged, not really caring if this prat of a woman stood or sat. The officer's comfort wasn't her concern. " To what do I owe the pleasure of your company Captain Jones?" she asked raising one of her dark eyebrows.

The CS woman, still glaring at her disdainfully quickly began to speak, not wanting to remain in this barbarians presence for long. " Admiral Fisher is concerned about the number of pirates in your companies harbor. He demands that your company turn these wanted criminals over to the proper authorities at once."

Olivia almost laughed at the other woman's words. " I'm sorry. But why does your Admiral Fisher think my company is beholden to him?" she waved a hand dismissively as she asked this.

Captain Jones gritted her teeth. Amongst the problems her beloved CS now faced was the fact that most people no longer respected it. The Tolkeen war was suppose to show the world that the CS was a mighty empire. The resulting economic collapse after the war, because of the war, had instead made it a laughing stock. Not to mention the death toil, a million dead against a nation that should have been a cake walk.

Captain Jones however did her best to keep her annoyance from her face. " Because the Admiral considers it an act of war by your company in harboring these known enemies of the state." Captain Jones's voice carried a note of warning.

Olivia shook her head, waving her hand dismissively again. " Unfortunately those same 'enemies of the state' are amongst my company's best customers. Since your own nation is not a customer of my company, I feel no need to suddenly cease my company's relationship with those customers." she said easily, as if explaining things to a small child.

The Coalition woman frowned, " Then you realize Admiral Fisher will have no choice but to level this latrine you call a kingdom." she hissed.

Olivia laughed, she quickly covered her mouth, shaking her head. " With what? His four destroyers, and pair of cruisers? Please, I know you coalition types enjoy being ignorant savages, but that borders on such stupidity as to be utterly ludicrous."

Jones's face turned red in anger, she wanted to reach over and throttle the woman for her lack of respect for the mighty Coalition Navy. Except the woman was right.

Olivia still laughing continued her denunciation of the Coalitions demands. " Or will he use his vast armada of pre-rifts relics to attack us from the air? Or even better, his single remaining marine division!" She laughed louder.

Wiping a tear from her eye Olivia finished her cut down of the vaunted CS. " Tell your Admiral that any such attack would be poorly chosen. We vastly out number you in both terms of marines and equipment. Our naval forces are not only numerically superior, but better trained, and experienced. Not to mention the economic problems your nation is having. Your already involved in a war against the bugs, he would be as stupid as Karl Prosek if he chose to start a second war front with my company. Amtrans has considerable clout with those enemies your nation fears so much. How much effort do you think it would take on our part to turn those enemies against your nation, now when it is at it's weakest?"

Olivia let the threat hang in the air, it was a stretch, admittedly, but then the CS military was little more then a goon squad incapable of much thought. Olivia doubted this woman or the admiralty she represented in this meeting would ever figure that out though. Besides the CS was so paranoid it jumped at it's own shadow, so her threat would sound all the more plausible to the higher ups when she reported it back to them.

Jones had heard enough, she turned on her heel, and marched towards the door. Olivia's laughter at her back the entire way.

Jess and Moira walked along the busy street of Portsmouth. Lorna was between the two holding onto the doll Jess had given her. She was whispering to Esmeralda as they walked. In front of the two women walked the Captain, and Tusks, who Jess always referred to by her actual name, Tracy. Behind the woman, the 2nd officer, a crazy named Twitch walked, talking to himself, or his companion, neither woman knew. His companion was a new hire, a phaeton juicer woman everyone called Angel. Who as was typical of those with the chemical augmentation, was more then a bit jumpy.

Angel's last crew worked her over real bad, although she wouldn't discuss the details. She had searched out the _Dragonray's_ captain for the same reason Jess's dad had. Cross could be trusted to keep his word. Angel would be bunking with the other two women, and her belongings were already on board the ship, in their cabin.

Angel was a small woman, no more then five feet tall, she was pale skinned and covered in freckles, much like Moira. She had strawberry blonde hair, and she kept this cut fairly short, it only reaching her ears. She was well toned, a result of the chemicals in her system, but very lightly muscled by juicer standards. Her type of juicer wasn't the powerhouse the others were, instead she was augmented for agility, reaction and stamina. She was a pilot, and had brought on board her own NG Sky King, she named Vengeance. Unlike many female juicers she retained her feminine shape, although she was like Jess in that she wasn't very curvy, although the juicer woman had more curves then Jess. Angel had been a juicer for only a year so far, and although it was a death sentence she wasn't going to go back to being a squishy ever again.

Twitch, who was a psychic was a bit nervous around her. He didn't have much in the way of psychic powers, but he had an uncontrollable form of empathy. Whatever had happened to the young juicer woman had left deep mental scars, and Twitch could feel this. He kept getting the feeling of hands groping him, and of being forced onto his back. It made the already unstable crazy, even more so. He was muttering to himself, mostly incomprehensible babble. He kept repeating something about don't sleep.

Moira was more then a little worried about bringing Lorna with them on this little outing, especially with the crazy. But Cross had assured her that Twitch would have ripped out his own heart before hurting the girl. Whats more the crazy would rip the heart out of anyone else who tried. Looking at Twitch she felt a bit of pity for the man, he may have been unstable, but he had the face of an angel. He was tall, being nearly seven feet. He was blue eyed, and had a baby face. He had more muscle then she'd ever seen on a man, and he seemed to stalk like a hunting cat. His hands constantly moved, or twitched,save for when he was in combat, and this is how he had come by his name. He wore a pair of rocket boots on his feet, a modified suit of Dog Boy half armor, and a pair of power gauntlets. He had two bandoleers of daggers across his chest, a half a dozen pistols, a sword, an axe, and a massive rifle. And that was just the things she could see. Jess had told her the crazy carried more weapons, just stashed in places that couldn't be easily seen.

The group was heading to a meeting, a week had passed since they made port, in that time Cross had come to the conclusion that Moira was well worth the addition of hiring her. But the ship was so large, with so many cabins, and other things needing cleaned that he had decided to hire another woman to help Moira in her chores. They were suppose to met her here, along with their contact.

Here being Oklahoma's stage coach, a New West saloon in a town in the central part of Canada. Cross found this ironic and had said so. The girls had come along to interview the woman they would hire. Moira was a bit paranoid about anyone staying in their cabin where she kept her daughter. She had insisted on meeting the woman first, just in case. Cross had even agreed that he wouldn't hire her unless Moira was OK with it. Angel had gone through the same interview with Moira and Jess, who was quickly becoming a second mother to little Lorna. The juicer had passed with flying colors, Lorna had almost instantly taken a shine to the young juicer. Whenever Angel wasn't on duty, she could be found playing Outbreak Zombie Plague 5: New Lazlo, with Lorna.

As they walked through the swinging doors, a man flew across the doorway, another close behind. Cross smiled, it been awhile since he'd gotten into a good ole' fashion barroom tussle. But Tusks put a hand to his shoulder, shaking her head, glancing at the little girl behind them. Cross frowned but nodded. Leave it to a kid to ruin his fun, he thought. He lead the group to a area of relative peace, and sat down at a table.

The barmaid came over and he playfully pulled her onto his lap, she laughed and playfully slapped his chest. " Paws off you scurvy sea dog!" she said in a clearly Canadian accent.

Cross laughed, " Ain't no sea dog here, just a outlaw outta Lone Star. Hows about you rustling us up some food, and a bottle of tequila. And get the munchkin a soda, grape if you got it." he swatted the barmaids rear, giving it a playful squeeze. She laughed shaking her head, but moved away to get the order.

Cross looked around the bar, looking for their contact, a little geeky man named Glitch. The same one who had given them the bad Intel on the last ship. Cross had been of half a mind to shoot the bastard, but Moira had explained what had happened. A few minutes before her and the other passengers were to embark on the ship that would take them to the other side of Lake Erie, they had been told to board the _Relentless._ The Captain of the _Relentless_ said this was because the other ship had experienced massive sabotage. He had been nervous about his own fleet being the target of it as well. The rest Cross knew.

The barmaid returned, with bowls full of some sort of soup with crackers for all of them. She had brought another woman with her, who was carrying the Tequila, several shot glasses, a grape soda, and several lime slices. After she gave everyone their bowl, she happily sat back down on Cross's lap, and poured him a drink. " Delilah here says your the captain she's suppose to met with. So I had her give me a hand with your order. Whats this aboot you hiring her on as a maid?" she asked him.

Cross looked at the barmaid on his lap, taking the shot glass from her hand, and taking it down. " Sorry sweetheart. I don't see no reason to be mixing business with pleasure. I done offered your friend here a job, and I'm fixin to see if she's a might agreeable to the rest of the crew first. But afterwards you and me can get a might cozy upstairs. I got an hour I can waste with ya."

The barmaid on his lap gave him a reproaching look, and slapped him. " I'm not that kind of barmaid." she said loudly, stomping off in anger. The crewman around him chuckled at her refusal, but Cross just shrugged, she hadn't been that good looking anyways.

He waved for Delilah to take a seat, and waved at Moira to conduct her interview. Moira blushed a bit, but quickly went into the details of what they were hiring her for. The captain had made Moira the chief sanitation petty officer. Which was just a fancy way of saying headmaid, but it sounded far more important as chief sanitation petty officer.

" Well dearie, ye'd be working under me ta clean the crews cabins. The crew sleeps four ta a cabin, and most o' them is meh who haven't a clue when ta bathe." she began.

Delilah laughed lightly, " I'm a prostitute, trust me, I've dealt with stinking men all day long." she said casually. Her face however had a look of disgust on it.

Moira was a bit shocked at this news," Well I don't wanna hear about ye servicing the crew if'n ye come aboard." she said with more then a little annoyance in her voice. She brushed a errant strand of her red hair from her eyes as she talked.

Delilah frowned, " Sorry if my current occupation bothers you. But I have a pair of girls at home who need food in their bellies, cloths on their backs, and a roof over their head. Jobs aren't all that common to come by nowadays, so you'll have to forgive me, I don't feel any shame by providing for my kids by way of spreading my legs and laying on my back." she said angrily. But the truth was that she did feel more then a little ashamed by this.

Moira sighed, shaking her head, " I'm sorry to have offended dearie. That was not my intention, I just want ye ta understand we won't be needin that type o' work from ye. Ye is ta clean, cook, and do laundry, that's it." she said as friendly as she could.

Delilah nodded, " Believe me I want out of my current profession. That was one of the terms I wanted when I discussed the job with the Captain. He promised me I wouldn't be required to turn tricks anymore. So I agreed to take the job." she said shrugging. She just hoped she made enough to support her family.

Moira was curious about her girls, so she asked, " Will yer wee ones be joining us on board?" She put a loving hand to her own daughter, gently stroking the red hair that was so like her own.

Delilah shook her head, " No they live in Relic with my husband. He's a disabled vet from the Tolkeen war, we took what little the CS gave us after he was mustered out of service and moved there. Bought ourselves an apartment, a mini-van and put some in savings. We had heard that there were jobs, but when we got there we found out it was only for skilled workers. I couldn't get a job in Relic, and believe me I tried. I was always a homemaker, my husband had the career. I went to every employment agency in the city, but all of them told me the same thing, I lacked any marketable skills, that a thousand other women didn't already have. So I've been wandering from port to port, doing whatever work I can find." she finished. The work tended to be as a barmaid and prostitute unfortunately, many women were finding their way to this line of work. Former housewives,forced to take whatever work they could find to support themselves and their families were a legacy of the Tolkeen war. Many had disabled husbands at home, who were crippled, and unable to do work. These men were forced to remain behind with children that often wondered late at night where mommy was, and why she wasn't home. Delilah was no more unique in this then hundreds of thousands of women. Whether former CS troopers, Mercenaries, or Tolkeen fighters, the war had touched everyone.

Moira understood what the woman was going through, she was not much different. True Moira had been raised on a farm and had many agricultural skills. But she lacked many technological ones. No one that she'd ever heard of in her native Scotland had electricity, or much in the way of technology, beyond what was available in the medieval time period. Hell to be honest no one in her village had journeyed more then fifty miles from the village. Edinburgh was only about twelve miles from her village, whose main industries were sheep and goat shepherding.

Her time as a slave had seen her used as a maid and sex toy by her master. Since she wasn't needed to use many complex machines, she had never been taught. This kept her reliant on her master which inturn had kept her docile. She was thankful she had escaped that life, she wanted so much better for her daughter, then what she had lived.

Delilah opened her purse and pulled out a battered photo, it was creased from having been folded many times, and was at least a couple of years old. She handed this to Moira, who unfolded it carefully, and smiled as she saw it. It showed a happy Delilah, with two small girls on her lap, and a man leaning over her shoulder. The man was dark haired, as was she and the girls.

Moira studied the woman for a few minutes. She was dark haired, with green eyes, and a pretty face. She wasn't a beautiful woman, more of the girl next door type. She was curvy in the way men liked, which was probably why she had started in her current career. She was fairly tall, even sitting down, Moira figured her to be a couple of inches taller then her. Currently she was wearing some strange dress that pushed her cleavage up, and allowed a person the best possible view of it.

Moira decided to mention this later, not wanting to upset the woman again. " So how old is ye lass?" she said instead.

Delilah laughed lightly, " I'm twenty." she said, her eyes twinkling.

Moira looked at the picture, " How old are ye wee ones?" she asked both girls looked about her own daughters age.

Again Delilah laughed, " Their twins, and both are just past six. I made the boneheaded mistake of letting my husband knock me up before he left for war. I was just over thirteen when I got pregnant, and turned fourteen right before having them." she said by way of explanation.

As the two women continued talking, Cross saw Glitch enter the saloon. He made for a corner table, and Cross and Tusks made for the table with Glitch, leaving the others to get to know each other. Glitch watched them approach, a worried look in his eyes, he had heard about the bungled cargo, and figured that Cross wanted to settle the score, blaming him.

But Cross wasn't concerned with the cargo, Moira's explanation had set his mind upon an answer and he figured it wasn't Glitch's fault. Someone else just hit the target first. He sat down easily, and waited for Tusks to do likewise, once she did he leaned forward. " What'ya got for me this time?" he ask the little man.

Glitch was the atypical nerd. A Hackrat, the guy knew how to crack into nearly any system in the world. Glitch was a small man, being no more then five and half feet tall. Glitch had greasy black hair, and wore cloths clearly not meant for style. A gray overcoat, with a polo shirt and slacks. A heavy black case hung from his shoulder, and inside was a screaming hot tech lap-top. He belonged to some gang called the Consortium. A sort of think tank gang that pooled it's resources, and sold the information it acquired to various groups. Cross figured that one of his fellow members sold the same Intel to another crew, and they hit the target before it set sail.

Glitch and his fellows made their money by using powerful transmitters to hack into shipping manifests, and course plots. Then selling that to pirates, and other thieves. Glitch looked a bit nervous and licked his lips. " Where's me cut first?" he asked them his voice shaking.

Cross smiled sarcastically, " Well since I ain't shot ya yet for the frag-up with the last cargo. I say that makes us even." he said easily. Glitch had half a mind to walk out of the meeting right there, but figured that Cross would just shoot him in the back. He was half-right, Cross would have shot him, just not in the back, most likely he would have put the screws to him if he stood.

Cross chuckled, seeing the little nerdy man break out in a sweat. " Besides, that frag-up is on you and yours by my reckoning." he added.

Glitch looked at him incredulously, " My fault!? You were suppose to capture the ship with several billion worth of SAMAS on it! Do you know how many other crews I passed over because I like you! If it's anyones fault....." but Glitch's voice died off, his throat going incredibly dry. Cross had casually drawn his holstered Colt Navy, and had it aimed at his nose. So fast was that draw that it was as if the weapon had just appeared in his hand. Glitch had blinked before the draw, missing it.

Cross was shaking his head. " See heres the problem I got with your line of reasoning. I captured the ship you told me about. I sank the escort vessels pretty as you please. I had my crew board the _Relentless_, everything went smooth as ice, until we got to the hold. And do you know what we find when we do?" He paused giving Glitch a chance to answer. Glitch knew what it was he had found, several gang members had bought one or two of the slaves from his crew after they tired of them.

"Passengers." Glitch answered in terror. His eyes fixated on the muzzle of the revolver in his face. He'd never been so scared in his life. Glitch was a computer geek, he'd never even been in a fistfight before, and now he had a gun in his face.

" Damn right! Not no billion credits worth of SAMAS, like you said, but passengers. Thems that had a mind to, started talking in all their panic. The threat of eminent violence tends to do that to folks. And they's tells me that right 'afore they bordered their boat, it done got itself blown up. The captain of the _Relentless_ was told by his company to load the passengers, and leave the cargo in the warehouse. The Captain told the passengers it was sabotage, and he was worried about the same thing happening to his boat. Your little hacker friends double dipped my friend, they sold the same info to another crew. Costing me and mine whats coming to them. So now I hope you understand why it is that I'm pointing this here pistol to your face _hombre_." Cross explained, his voice calm and even.

Glitch could only nod. " I got it. Totally my fault dude. Won't happen again." he stuttered.

Cross smiled, the revolver twirled as he holstered it. " Good to hear, knew you were an upstanding gentleman." he said happily.

Glitch sighed as the pistol was placed back in its holster. He felt a layer of sweat all over him, and figured he'd need to change his shorts once he got home. Assuming he got home that is. The paydata he had was good, he knew, having made certain of it twice. He hadn't heard about the passenger ship being the target of sabotage, but he'd look into it. The gang, and Glitch made their money by being honest in their sale of data to the pirates, intelligence agencies, and mercenaries. If word got out that someone in their organization was selling information twice, it could mean a disaster in business for all of them. Or worst, start getting them killed.

Glitch opened his case, and pulled out his laptop. He opened this and typed a few commands, then he looked at Cross, he wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow. " Standard fees still apply. I understand I goofed up on the last job, but I'm gonna look into it, get with the homies and find our mole. But these three marks are solid, and totally my own. I haven't shared them with anyone in the Consortium." he said in a hushed whisper.

Cross nodded. He liked Glitch, who was to his mind a smart kid. Sure he was a little cocky about his skills, but then most guys were. Glitch licked his lips, and began to pitch his intel. " I got three marks like I said. One is a simple waylay. Cargo should be worth quite a bit to the right buyer. And I got the buyer." he said confidently.

Cross shrugged, " Whats the value, and what's the cargo?" he asked.

Glitch smiled, " after my cut, 22 million. Weapons grade plutonium is the what, about two tons worth." Glitch answered.

Cross shook his head, " Aint got the containment on the ship for that." he was saying, but Glitch shook his head.

" That's the thing man, it's in its own self contained containers! Footlocker type containers that each carry two hundred pounds of the stuff." Glitch said excitedly. If Cross and his crew hit this mark, he'd have enough to retire on. Then no more almost getting shot for something he didn't do.

Cross seemed to be pondering it, then shrugged, " What the hell. Give me the details." he said finally.

Glitch smiled " In three days, a small freighter called the '_Glory of Prosek_' will set sail from the state of Iron Heart, heading out of the CS navy base there, Sault Ste. Marie. From there the ship will head south, out of Lake Huron, and into Lake Michigan, on its way to the CS navy base in old Chicago. Thing is, since this cargo is so sensitive, and so vital to the CS Navy's nuclear armament program the CS is paranoid as all hell that it's going to get hit. Redhook's crews been terrorizing the CS in Lake Michigan and Huron you know. Anyway their so afraid to draw attention to it, that their not sending anything more then a pair of Barracuda patrols boats, and three Stingray mini-subs." he said

Cross smiled, " In other words only standard escorts, so as to not give away that this cargo's valuable." finishing the little nerdy mans thoughts.

Glitch nodded, " You take me with you, and give me access to your ships ECM, and ECCM, and I guarantee we walk away with this prize." he finished confidently.

Cross made a show of thinking about the little man's offer, but it wasn't a really tough decision. Still it was better to appear like he was mulling it over. Finally he nodded, " And you got a buyer, with the cred already lined up?" he asked

Glitch smiled, " You knows how I rolls El Capetian!" he boasted.

Cross raised an eyebrow. " Never call me that again, ya hear? The last thing we need is another fragging _gringo_ on this ship." Then he waved for the man to follow him, and got up. He walked back to the rest of his crew. Moira, Jess and Delilah were gone, and he looked to Twitch and Angel who were huddled around Lorna protectively.

" Wheres my ladies at?" he asked concerned. Twitch answered him that the three were upstairs getting Delilah's things. But no sooner had he explained then the three women appeared with suitcases in hand. Cross nodded, and waved them to follow, taking the suitcase from Moira's hand. Twitch took the other two, and they began heading back to the ship. Glitch told them he had to get somethings from his apartment, and he'd meet them in an hour. Cross waved him off without much thought.

Glitch slipped away down a side alley, and headed for home. Once well out of earshot of the captain and his crew he pulled out a cell phone and hit a key. It dialed the number automatically, and began to ring. When it was picked up he spoke quickly, " I got the crew for the job. I'll call you back when we hit Port." then he listened to the instructions from the voice on the other end. This done he hung up the phone and moved quickly to his apartment, not wanting to linger on the street to long. This city was dangerously crazy to walk down allies alone.


	4. Chapter three

Chapter Three:

In the Navy!

Captain Halley Jones sat in her captains chair, Plush black leather and sighed. It was good to be back in board her boat, even if it wasn't the command she dreamed of. Around her, her crew called out the all ready for departure.

Despite her unsuccessful mission to intimidate the Amtrans corporate executive of Port Harbor, she was still a very decorated CS naval officer. Admiral Fisher had immense faith in her abilities to handle things. She had never failed him once in any of her assignments. Even the meeting hadn't been considered a failure, the admiral had known the executive wouldn't go along with the Coalitions demands. So he hadn't been to concerned when Captain Jones returned to tell him they said no.

Admiral Fisher had only dispatched the mission to silence his own commanders. Old men who seemed to be under the delusion that the CS still reined supreme on the continent. With the economic collapse of the CS, it just couldn't afford to back up it's threats. Sure the CS could still go toe to toe with nearly any other army on the planet and probably win, but it wouldn't have been able to pay the bills for such a war. Because of this the CS had to choose its battle's carefully. Increased guerrilla activity by the FOM, Pecos Barbarians, and Tolkeen resistance forces drained the life out of the army. The war against the Xiticix was draining more and more from the CS. Both in terms of money, and blood, their simply wasn't enough of either to go around. The mechanized forces of the CS were just to expensive to use, and lose, and they were losing them just as fast as in Tolkeen. This meant far more troopers were being diverted to the regular infantry, where costs were much, much lower. The best and brightest remained in the RPA Corps, but the army was washing out more and more, sending these to the grunts.

Captain Jones wasn't a army officer though, she was a Navy one. Captain of a small patrol boat, as their simply wasn't enough capital ships to go around. Her boat was decorated, a Barracuda patrol boat christened, _Purity_. She had a experienced crew, and was well disciplined. The crew was preparing to perform escort for a shipment of Plutonium from Iron Heart to Chi-Town. Admiral Fisher had personally planned this mission. four Barracuda's, four Stingray mini-subs, and a squadron of Wave Demons were assigned as it's escort. He knew it was chancing drawing attention, but had added the extra ships, the cargo was just to vital to the war effort. The CS planned to use the Tomahawks that would be made from the plutonium against the bugs, seeing this as the only means of gaining the victory needed, and the breathing room to repair the damaged economy.

Admiral Fisher had put one of his best and brightest in charge of the convoy, Captain Haley Jones. She was honored when he had asked her to command the convoy. She knew how vital this mission was, as he had stressed it's importance to her during the briefing.

She awaited the sign from her coms officer, telling her the other ships were ready to make way. After a few minutes the coms officer gave her the thumbs up, and she ordered half forward speed. The helmsman repeated her order, and pushed the throttle forward to half way. The Barracuda's engine whined up, and soon she could see the world moving by as the ship began moving forward. Behind her ship, she knew was the massive Freighter, besides the plutonium, the ship carried iron ore, silver ingots, and gold bars. Not much gold and silver, but a cargo worth millions none the less. The Silver and Gold would be used to cover some of the extra credits currently in circulation, lowering some of the inflation the CS was dealing with. The freighters crew of thirty was an experienced merchant marine one, and she had added a platoon of marines, along with a squadron of Super-Sams to its crew complement.

As they moved out from the harbor she was a bit apprehensive, the Admiral worried that Redhook, a notorious pirate might catch wind of the shipment, and move to intercept it. Because of that he didn't want to make the convoy to large, for fear of giving away the value of its cargo. With few capital ships available, adding any of them would signal to the pirate that this was a cargo worth taking. So the Admiral had to use less high priority escorts. True a four ship escort, with Wave Demon interceptor boats was a pretty large force, it wouldn't be to unexpected, or raise to much attention. After all Redhook had been preying on the CS shipping lanes for some time now, it was only natural that they beefed up their standard escort patrols.

The convoy pulled away from harbor, wondering if their rouse would work, and hoping it did. The CS just couldn't handle to many more setbacks.

Cross sat in his leather captains chair, a set of binoculars to his eyes. Beside him, with another set was Tusks. The two were scanning the horizon looking for some sign of the convoy they meant to waylay.

Glitch sat at the ECM/ECCM station, which was normally unoccupied, since none of the crew knew how to use it properly. Glitch had it set and on standby. As soon as anyone spotted something, and Cross gave the command, he'd set the activation code, and block all enemy transmissions, radar/sonar, and targeting computers. The _Dragonray_ was equipped with a cutting edge system, a Harlequin MK III ECM/ECCM. The thing could do almost anything, if one knew how to use it. Glitch after seeing it told Cross that enemy torpedo's, missiles and sensors were pointless. The Harlequin would override them and shut them down, causing massive electrical feedback, and burning out most of the enemy's computer systems.

Even better the Harlequin would protect itself and its host by drowning out, such ECM by the enemy. Sensors were useless against it, the system could wash, jam, and burn them out in a matter of seconds. Unless the enemy was packing a similar rig, and he doubted very much it was, they were in for a rude surprise.

But the prize, which should have been here already was no where to be seen. The Dragonray, owing to her speed had moved to this chosen spot, to arrange the intercept on the prize ship. But that ship either had already passed, or was slower then originally anticipated. Given that the enemy was using sub's, they had chosen a shallow place to set their ambush. The subs would have to maneuver closer to the surface, giving the Dragonray and her sub-hunting equipped aerial units a better chance of finding them, and sinking them. Her underwater power armor was already deployed, a hundred feet under the surface, waiting.

Her SAMAS and Redhawks, thanks to the Wild Weasel SAMAS in the sky, were already in the air. The Wild Weasels carried advanced ECM/ECCM of their own, and this would prevent the enemy from spotting them via radar. The two GB's piloted by the commanders of the power armored Marines stood on the special plates designed to allow them to fire at the bow of the foredeck. Since no crewman was up there without ear protection due to the five inch cannons, the GB's could fire indiscriminately. The two GB's were likewise using their powerful magnification sensors to scan the horizon, while watching their own radars.

Finally a blimp appeared on the long range radar, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief, they hadn't missed the convoy. Soon other blips appeared, more then originally forecast. Five miles out, and rapidly approaching, the radar operator made them as a dozen Wave Demons, and four patrol boats. The Stingrays wouldn't appear on radar, since they were underwater. Cross yelled for firing solutions on all the patrol boats, full volley of torpedoes, guns and missiles.

His crew was well experienced in sea battles, and they quickly had them plotted, he ordered to wait utill the ships hit the three mile mark, which would put them on the other side of the horizon still, and prevent the enemy from seeing them. He told Glitch to activate the ECM at the same time. Further orders were given to launch the Air units once the three mile marker was hit, their mission was to hunt down the enemy sub's.

He told the helmsman to prepare for full speed ahead, once the three mile marker was reached the Dragonray would launch itself at the enemy, until then they were invisible to radar and sonar so long as they stayed still. Or the enemy didn't use active sonar.

The crew waited anxiously, but then the radar operator shouted, " Three mile marker reached by convoy!" They having been waiting for the last ship to pass the marker.

Cross turned and yelled, " Hoist the colors! All hands execute!" Then suddenly the Dragonray became a frenzy of activity. Screaming missile reports, thundering cannon discharges, silent torpedo launches. The engines kicked in, and its three props churned water, propelling the Dragonray forward at nearly 70 knots once max speed was reached. Hover engines whined as the Dragonfly, and Sky King leaped into the air, along with twelve rocket cycles.

To the enemy it was as if everything just appeared one second on their radar. As radar operators tried to relay their sudden discovers, their panels sparked and caught fire, as the electrical systems were overridden by powerful feed back. Those same operators jumped to their feet, doing their best to put out the suddenly flaring instrument panels. The Harlequin proving far more then adequate to fry most of the enemies electronics.

Captain Jones was yelling loudly, trying to be heard over the sounds of fire alarms. Smoke clogged her throat making her cough. When the ECM had fried the instrument panel, it had exploded, killing her sensor operator, and catching half the cabin on fire. Her helmsman was also dead, killed by flying debris, and _Purity_ sat dead in the water because of it. The helm destroyed by the same explosion that had robbed her helmsman of his life.

Looking around at the rest of the crew trying to fight the fire that was threatening to overwhelm them, her eyes fell to the port side porthole. Their her sister ship, the _Vigilant _disintegrated under a massive cannon shell. She blinked away tears from her coughing, as two torpedo's slammed into the bow of her ship. The explosion tried to flip the boat over, but she was to long and she fell back into the water heavily. Her bow missing, the _Purity_ quickly took on water, and began sinking. As her bow sank below the water, Jones yelled to abandon ship. She moved to open the hatch, and barely got it open, as water began to seep into the cabin. She climbed through, followed by the three surviving members of her crew. As she dove into the water she noticed the massive destroyer baring down on them. She also noticed the other two Barracuda's sinking, and the freighter listing to starboard. The enemy it seemed had pounded them all with a quick volley, then jumped out from wherever it had been hiding.

Water exploded in plumes, blasting up into the air, she watched helplessly as a Dragonfly dropped another depth charge, and a pair of mini-torpedoes from it's wings. The last known location of the Stingrays put one in that direction, the resulting explosion wasn't as large as it should have been, the enemy must have gotten the sub. The Wave Demons, the only surviving surface craft were trying desperately to get out a signal, to call for reinforcements, but like the other ships, their electronics were destroyed. Although the Wave Demons were still able to move under power, the enemy had more then enough guns in range now. Powerful laser cannon shots hit one Wave Demon, blowing it to pieces. Another pair simply exploded for no apparent reason. But then a sonic boom rolled over her, and she knew what had destroyed those Wave Demons. Glitter boy Boomguns.

The enemy had planned this to well, somehow they had gotten word of this shipment, and the route it would go by. She had purposely slowed the convoy down, as they approached this point, knowing it would have made a great ambush site. She had expected to throw any lurking pirates off, making them think they'd already missed the convoy.

But apparently this crew was a bit more patient then most pirates. Shaking her head she called for her crew to follow her as she swam towards the freighter. It was slow going, but luckily she had her armor on, with its special buoyancy modification. The Shark armor of the CS navy was a technological marvel, not the least of which was it's ability to float in water. Soon she made it to the hand holds on the freighters side, and began to climb up. She noticed the other Barracuda's crew doing likewise, and while a few were missing, it wasn't as bad as it could be.

She climbed over the top rail with the assistance of the marine lieutenant. The marines helping the rest of the crew over. She checked her pistol, and yelled for the marines to prepare to repel boarders. The destroyer was fast approaching, but she was cutting speed, soon she'd be alongside the Freighter, and then the pirates would try and board the ship. Looking around at the forty marines, she didn't feel very confidant. A destroyer that size had at least a hundred or more boarders. As it approached it hosed the deck with its point-defense guns, cutting down more then a few of the marines, and merchants on the deck.

Her Super-Sams were in the air, but they were vastly outnumbered, and the GB's were acting as snipers, picking them off fairly easy. She watched as one Sam crashed back down to the deck of the freighter, and wondered if she shouldn't just surrender. Her pondering was drawn to a quick end though, the destroyer was along side now, and she watched as what looked like a cowboy leaped from the deck, blasting away with two laser pistols that were shaped like old west revolvers.

Cross had always been an acrobatic kinda of guy. He easily made the jump from his ship to the prize ships deck. As he flew across the five foot chasm to the deck below, he drew his Wilks Remi's and put a round through two marines heads. He landed hard,rolling forward, coming up to his feet again, he took down a second pair, same as before. His uncanny marksman skill easily allowing him to put his shots through the fairly fragile transparent steel of the marines helmets. A marine opened fire with his CP-40, and Cross rolled behind a cargo bin, taking cover while the marine wasted ammo firing on full auto.

Tusks came down right behind Cross, activating her Kittani plasma axe as she flew across the distance, she landed hard, but unlike Cross, she used the added momentum of her fall, to cleave through a marine. She waded forward, swinging her axe as if chopping down trees. Only the fiery plasma blade was cleaving through armor and flesh, not wood.

The panic that a ogress with a plasma axe landing in the middle of your formation and hacking away had, was enough of a distraction for Cross to pop back out from behind his cover. He sniped another pair through the faceplate, and moved to support Tusks.

There was a high pitched whining sound, like rocket motors, and soon Twitch came somersaulting down to land on the deck. His NG Particle beam rifle on auto, spraying the marines on deck. He laughed madly as returning laser fire bounced of his Naruni force field, not taking his finger from the trigger until his power pack was empty. Once his rifle was spent, he let it fall as it hung from a strap around his body. He drew out his Naruni Thompson plasma guns, a matched set, and flipped their selectors to full auto. Brass casings flew out from the ejector ports as the weapons discharged balls of flaming blue plasma.

Then the rest of the boarding party hit the deck, amongst them a few juicers, and crazies. Each man was responsible for his own weapons and armor, and each tried to get the best they could afford. All told their were some hundred and fifty boarders, which made quick work of the CS marines will to fight. Soon the survivors were throwing up their hands in surrender.

Cross called for a ceasefire and his crew began gathering up weapons, and putting restraints on the surviving CS personal. It wasn't a long task, most of them were dead. He ordered four prize teams to check the holds, a ship like this had two, one fore, and one aft. Other crew members were looting the weapons, e-clips and armor from the CS personal. Two more prize teams, were running through the freighter looking for anything else worth while.

A gangplank was put in place between the to ships. The _Dragonray_ was a a few feet taller then the freighter, so the plank was a ramp. There was a crane on board the Freighter, and a crewman got in this and started it. The hold hatches were opened, now they were just waiting for the prize teams to hook the cargo line to the prize. It wasn't long before they began to call up their discovery. Namely that their wasn't any plutonium on board this ship.

Cross cursed loudly, eying the CS Personal that still lived, he yelled, " Which one of y'all baby-killers is in charge here?" No one moved to answer, and Cross lost his patience. Picking two survivors at random, he put a laser bolt through their faces.

" Ain't polite to not answer a man when he asks an honest question. So let me repeat myself. Which of y'all babykilling, inbred, godless pigs, are in charge of this little fragging convoy?" He said angrily.

One of them, a small black woman answered, " I am." she said her own voice carrying her anger at his callous murder of two innocent men.

He moved over to her, and took her up by the arm. She stood up, as he wrenched her arm painfully. Her face was contorted in pain, and while Cross didn't like hurting women, that didn't apply to CS personal. He then dragged her to the forward hold, easily viable due to the large hatches being open. When they got to the lip of the hold his hand pushed her head forward to see clearly.

" There's supposed to be two tons of plutonium, in little yellow cases, with big radioactive symbols on'em. Now I ain't seein any of those, so where are they?" he yelled into her ear.

Captain Jones blinked. He was right they weren't here, and they should have been. In their place was six suits of Mauler power armor, and four suits of Terror Trooper. Each suit was unbuttoned, opened and waiting for a pilot to step into them. Each was securely fastened to a large mega-steel pallet.

" I don't know." she said softly, Jones had a feeling of panic. These bloodthirsty pirates would likely just kill them all now that their prize wasn't here. But why, she wondered, did pirates want a shipment of weapons grade plutonium?

He grabbed a hand full of her hair painfully, and dragged her to the aft hold, he pushed her head over the lip and asked the same question again. But again she answered the same, she honestly didn't know where the shipment was. The rear hold held the bulk of the iron ore, gold bullion, and silver ingots. She noticed several suits of Sea Samas armor, just like the others, opened and secured to Mega-steel pallets.

Cross growled throwing the woman onto her rump and kicked the lip of the cargo hold. Amongst the first prize team was the Quartermaster a human man named John Taylor, but who everyone called Bookie. Bookie looked up at Cross and started talking over the Officer's channel. " Captain, don't be to mad sir. The stuff here is worth more then the plutonium, and easier to sell if you ask me. About a half ton of gold alone that makes this all worthwhile. Plus there's four tons of silver, six maulers, four terror troopers, and twelve Sea Sams. Not to mention the small arms, armor and e-clips we recovered from the crew. Along with their credit cards, even if CS credits ain't worth all that much nowadays. We're getting paid this time captain, I promise you." The Quartermaster said.

Cross stood for a moment thinking. He trusted Bookie's word, so if the man said they'd make better credit with this cargo, he believed him. Still he was angry, this was the second time Glitch had sold him the wrong information. There would be a reckoning coming soon for the little nerdy man. But that would have to wait until after they were long gone from here. Cross keyed his comlink for the open crew channel. " Start loading what Bookie's marked."

With that Cross called for Jess over the engineer's channel, she wasn't long in the coming, having been standing by on the deck of the _Dragonray_ waiting. The skinny mechanic ran across the gangplank, and moved to the bridge. She was to disable the comms, and helm here, then do the same to the engine room. It would take the crew hours to repair the ship enough to get it moving, by then they'd be half way to port.

Cross watched as the crane pulled out the first of the pallets, swinging it over and into the hold of the _Dragonray_. Cross knew it was the pallet of Gold Bullion, that being the most profitable thing on the ship. Other crewmen were forming a chain, passing small items that could be carried by hand across to the _Dragonray_. First across were all the weapons and valuables collected from the crew and marines. Although CS weapons didn't go for what they use to before the war, they would still make some cred. The _Dragonray_ had five men who worked under the Quartermaster, each of these were scattered about, recording the loot so the quartermaster could later figure each mans share, after expenses.

The first pallet loaded, the crane swung back around and pulled out a second, repeating its swing and lowering it into the hold of the _Dragonray_. Inside the hold, using power lifters, stripped down robotic frames with forklift type arms, the supply crew moved the pallets into an orderly arrangement. Before the pallets were tied down, a pair of crewmen went over them with a bugbuster. A small device that created massive electrical feedback in transmitters, destroying any device that might be used to track the cargoes. Then they tied them down, securing them from moving around as the ship rocked and moved.

Loading was going quickly, even though such actions are often time consuming. There was only the one pallet of gold, two pallets of silver, and twenty two for the power armor. Pirate crews were well practiced, and worked as well oiled machines, able to load and unload cargo quickly. In less then fifteen minutes, they had the cargo loaded, and were back on board the _Dragonray_, excited at the prospects of their catch.

Cross and Tusk were the last to return to the ship, they didn't bother to untie the crew and marines. The longer it took the CS personal to get untied, the more time the pirates had to make their escape. As Cross returned to the bridge he yelled out a course, " Make way to Port Harbor, full speed ahead." the navigator, the 3rd officer in the chain of command repeated his orders, and began to plot out the course, calling out coordinates which were repeated by the helmsmen. The ship pulled away from the crippled freighter, churning water as it turned eastward, making full steam.

Twenty four miles south of the ambush site, the '_Skullfinder'_ a CS Stingray mini-sub was creeping at nearly twenty percent max speed. She was moving so slowly in fact that the fish were passing her with ease.

The reason she moved so slow was to prevent any enemy who might be listening with passive sonar. At the speed she moved, combined with her stealth systems meant she was near to invisible as was possible. Of course she also moved so slowly as to make a journey of several hours, into several days.

In the captains chair, a mug of coffee in his hand sat Rear Admiral Eric Fisher, wearing his Commando armor and watching the view screen. Eric Fisher was the youngest son of Admiral Travis Fisher, commander and chief of the CS Navy. He had enlisted early and joined the SEALS after his stint in the Marine Corps. His career as a SEAL had taught him to think quickly, and more then a little underhanded.

Admiral Fisher was a hands on Commander, like his father. His underlings trusted him to listen to their advice and act on it if he thought it was viable. So when his head of Computer Warfare told him he had found a number of discrepancies in the shipping logs. Admiral Fisher had given the man, and his division the go ahead to begin a complicated stake out. The discrepancies told the Eggheads in the CWD that someone was hacking into their system, stealing shipping logs, and plotted courses. Another quick search revealed that all those ships, whose logs and courses had been stolen, had been the target of some very successful pirate raids.

The Head of the CWD in Iron Heart, where the intrusion was occurring had set on a plan and outlined it to the admiral, who couldn't make sense of the techno-jargon the man had used and was given the laymans version by his aide. The Egghead wanted to insert a program into the shipping logs that would leave a trail for them to follow. The program would essentially mark every file that the hacker viewed or stole. This would allow the Eggheads to warn those ships, and thus prevent them from being easy marks.

Admiral Fisher had given his go ahead, and the Worm was inserted into the Shipping Logs. The hacker who had been raiding their system must have gotten a little to full of himself, because he never found that worm. Every time he logged onto the server, using his spoofed codes and passwords, he left marks for the Eggheads to follow him. The worm kept meticulous records of his keystrokes, codes and passwords, as well as the files he viewed, the sites he visited on the CS Network, and everything else he did. It would upload these while he was surfing along, using an auto save feature that would transmit his information as he downloaded things from the 'Net. It used so little of his bandwidth that he must not have noticed, or he was just to cocky and never thought to look. Even better, the worm infected every system he went to, recording the same data and uploading it into the dump cache

Regardless the Worm had revealed he had stolen the information on a shipment of SAMAS. Admiral Fisher had decided to stage a little demonstration. His own Eggheads had hacked the Shipping logs for the NG port in question. He had found a suitable ship, a passenger vessel loaded with refugees. He had dispatched a SEAL team to sabotage that ship, so that it couldn't set sail. He had canceled the delivery via the NG shipping company. Knowing the company would load the passengers onto the ship that had been booked to transport his armor. The Eggheads had kept an eye on the newsnet's and sure enough the ship that had been scheduled to transport his armor had been hit, and was missing.

While Admiral Fisher had found it humorous to thumb his finger's at the pirates, knowing the cargo they had gotten was no where near what they expected, he had other concerns. Shortly after this, the Intel about the plutonium shipment was stolen, and Admiral Fisher had to do more then just thumb his fingers at them. The shipment couldn't be allowed to fall into the enemies hands. So Admiral Fisher had set out on a complicated ruse. He had planned two simultaneous missions. Neither went into the shipping log, according to the computers all the ships involved were else where doing other things.

He had planned the convoy, putting one of his best and brightest captains in command of it. He hoped she would be able to ID the pirates at the very least, but he imagined it was Redhook. Redhook was a deserter, an ex CS navy Commodore who commanded a Sea King cruiser, and a small flotilla of Trident patrol boats, Barracuda's and many unknowns. The ex commodore had convinced his whole flotilla to desert the CS navy after a series of disastrous battles against the navy of Free Quebec. Fisher considered the deserter his arch-rival, and figured the deserter considered him the same. He knew that he was in many ways throwing the convoy out as food for the wolves, but it couldn't be helped. If it was Redhook, then even the whole of the capital ships the CS had left in the Great Lakes wouldn't have stopped him. If it was another pirate gang, then they could use their mole to prepare their own ambush in time.

Fisher had been tempted to ship everything by a Deathshead transport, but the truth was with the many dragons still in the area, this wasn't a better option. Besides Deathshead transports were in short supply now, the Tolkeen war had destroyed most of the CS's fleet of them. With no money, they really couldn't afford to replace them. This also hadn't been a better option for a number of reasons. If he had done so, it wouldn't have took long for the pirates, and the hacker who was spreading the CS made intel gathering virus from node to node, and hacker to hacker to realize there was something wrong. The virus was uploading priceless intelligence on the movements of CS enemies, and he knew would allow the CS to begin striking back against the pirates. He just had to choose which cargoes to allow the pirates to hit, and he'd have a ready made trap for them. Choosing your battles was the new CS military motto.

In many ways Fisher was living up to his namesake. Baiting the pirates to attack supposed easy targets, then closing the trap on them. It irked him to have to sacrifice so much to make this plan a success, but he knew it was worth it in the end. His father had taught him well in the art of warcraft. Sacrifice a few pawns here, to take a much more important piece there. He had switched out the cargoes with far more valuable ones. At least to a pirates mentallity. If some great enemy of the CS was behind this, it wouldn't take long for word of it to reach the intel boys.

But Fisher was determined that Redhook, or whoever wouldn't get this cargo. He had added one additional ship to the convoy, unknown to any. That ship, a Stingray mini-sub was just large enough to carry the shipment of Plutonium. Her holds, power armor bay, and every available space was packed with the containers that carried the plutonium. Fisher had taken over command of this vessel personally, and he had given the crew strict orders. Absolute silent running, no radio, no radar, passive sonar only. The crew was also forbidden to speak, and were passing notes back and forth to each other to carry out commands.

They were using the convoy as cover, and taking a twisted route to their destination, the CS naval base at old Chicago. They had skirted around the convoy, knowing the pirates would be focused on it, and not looking for any subs miles away from it. This operation had been expensive, in terms of both materials, and men's lives. But Admiral Fisher knew, it was worth it.

Captain Jones shook her head in annoyance, the freighter was busted and they were lowering the lifeboats. She didn't have the tools, or the needed technical knowledge amongst her crew to repair the ship. It was still taking on water, although the compartment had been sealed, the ship listed another few feet to starboard, and she had been worried that the ship would sink before they could get free.

That had taken at least an hour, after which it had taken another hour to finally determine that the plutonium shipment was not on board. The merchant sailors were more then a little concerned about this, they had seen it loaded and in the hold the day before they set sail. Someone in the harbor had removed it, and not told the ship. The Merchant Captain may have been able to tell them, but he was dead, one of those shot by the pirate captain in his bordering action.

So now Captain Jones was trying to organize the remaining crew in abandoning the ship. She was having them get any and all food and water supplies they could find, along with a few short ranged hand radios. Since these hadn't been in use during the ECM attack, they should still function. The enemy had stripped them of their weapons and armor, so they were going defenseless, or so they thought at first. A couple of the Merchants had smuggled a vibroblade and pistol on board. Despite the fact that it was against regulation, Captain Jones was more then willing to overlook this little detail.

Hers was the last boat to be filled and she climbed down the cargo net with a look of resignation on her face, this was the worse blunder in her career. She had never experienced the number of casualties, and absolute defenselessness that this battle had been. If one could even call it a battle. Her forces hadn't even been able to get off a shot before being sunk. She knew that a battle against a capital ship with just patrol boats was hard going, but dammit! She should have at least been able to damage it some.

She blamed the ECM system the enemy had used. When NG/MI had broken from their alliance with the CS in late 109 PA, they had been causing trouble for their former Allie. They had developed some sophisticated ECM/ECCM systems, and the CS was at a lost to how they had developed them. Unknown was the fact that they were a larger, more powerful version of the ECM/ECCM systems found on the Bandito Arms Wild Weasel SAMAS armor. The original specs for the system were purchased by both nations from the notorious rogue weapons manufacturer.

The NG/MI Navy were now sporting far more capital ships then the CS in the great lakes. True the CS still had its vast blue water navy stationed in the Atlantic, but its hold on the great lakes was a thing of the past. The vessels coming out of those two mercenary nations carried some of the screaming hottest tech in the lakes. MI had brokered an agreement with the supposedly defunct Iron Heart Armaments. Purchasing up the design specs, and as many of their tech personal as they could find. This was made easier by a pirate gang called the Iron heart avengers, a group composed of more then two dozen former technicians of that defunct company. The Manistique Imperium had snatched them up as soon as a deal could be made. MI then built massive shipyards and begun producing the former designs of IHA.

As soon as the alliance with the CS was broken, those ships, or rather stripped down versions of them began showing up on the open market. NG was quick to follow its sister nations example, and produced stripped down versions of their own vessels. Now the two were advertising entire new product lines of vessels, whose main design feature seemed to be thwarting the CS.

Getting in her lifeboat she understood her mistake. Despite the fact that she was a very good river boat captain, this battle had shown her how much she still had to learn. She should have figured on ECM, she should have sent her sub's out with their complement of Sea Samas to screen and search for lurking enemys. Perhaps that would have given her some warning, some time to formulate a counter attack and defense. Or perhaps not. Hindsight as they say is 20/20, and perhaps she was only wasting her time with wishful thinking that she could have somehow prevented this tragedy.

Regardless as she took her seat and the little lifeboat pulled away from the crippled freighter, she couldn't stop replaying the events in her minds eye. Fortunately she had hours to contemplate the events. Unfortunately she had hours to contemplate her worst failure as well.


	5. Chapter four

Chapter 5:

Shore Leave.

Cross lay in his bunk, Tusks or Tracy as he called her in private curled up in his arm, her head on his chest, lovingly rubbing his stomach. Both were lathered in each others sweat,after a few hours of private celebration of a job gone right. They were still several hours out from port, and the two planned to spend the rest of their night in private.

Cross lite a cigarette, exhaling in genuine satisfaction. Tracy rolled over, playfully taking it from his lips. She took a drag exhaling smoke with a pleased expression on her face. At his look of indignation at taking his cigarette she laughed. " You owe me remember! I told you I'd never let you do that to me, and still you talked me into it."

Cross smiled wide, and kissed her full lips, leaning back he took out another cigarette and lite it. Exhaling a thick cloud of smoke, he smiled, " Liar. You enjoyed it to much for me to be owing you." he said teasingly.

She blushed and hid her face for a moment, shaking her head she playfully bite his chest. " Just because I enjoyed it doesn't mean you still don't owe me." she teased.

He chuckled and shrugged, " Well then I guess the cigarette makes us even then." he said smiling at her mischievously.

His words angered her. She slapped him, considering that she was an ogre and many times stronger them him, it hurt, leaving a bruise. She eyed him evilly for a moment, " I hope I'm worth more to you then a cigarette!" she hissed.

Cross winced and rubbed his chest, she probably hadn't meant to hit him that hard, but still. It hurt and stung. He gave her a look of confusion, " Wait, when did this become a serious conversation?" he asked her.

She sat up, pulling the sheet up around her nude form. She pushed him away from her and moved to the end of their double bunk. She still eyed him angrily, " When you said a Cigarette made us even. You realize your the first man whose ever done that to me right? And If I didn't love you, you never would have. Not to mention the fact that I would have castrated you for your attempt." she growled at him.

Cross blinked, still rubbing his chest, he sat up and shook his head. " Tracy I was just joking with ya! Damn woman I thought we were teasing each other, I didn't know you was being truthsome!" he said, more then a bit of concern in his voice. There were few in the world that Cross was genuinely concerned with in this world, that list consisting of himself, and the woman at the end of his bunk, Tracy, or Tusks, depending on who was referring to her.

She still eyed him with the same look of resentment. " You should have Cross! Your my best friend, and my lover. I mean dammit Markus! Your my fragging husband, even if you don't think I'm your fragging wife! Do you even know how long we've been together? " she yelled.

He blinked, he never did understand when she spoke of them as if they were husband and wife. " Well damn Tracy, its been I don't know six, seven years?" he said confusedly.

She eyed him again, and then kicked him in the chest, he flew out of the bunk and landed on the floor, the metallic floor was riveted and some of these tore more gouges in his back, beside the ones Tracy's nails had made. Tracy was on top of him in an instant, and she pummeled him with her fists. " You don't fragging know! You don't fragging know!" She landed several good blows to his face, Cross was seeing stars as she continued to rage.

She grabbed his throat, yanking him towards her face, her powerful hand squeezed his throat tightly, cutting off his airflow. She sprayed him with spittle as she roared, " It's been seven years! Seven years since I took you into my bed and made you my husband, you cheating jackass! And during that time I've let you sleep with every little tramp you find, and now you tell me I'm worth a ciggertte!" she slammed his head back into the deck plate, busting the back of his skull open, and causing him to bleed heavily.

The effect was that Cross's body went limp,sagging beneath her, and he passed out. His body seemed to spasm slightly, and she found her rage suddenly disappear. Her anger was replaced by a horrible fear. She'd killed him.

Looking at him laying on the floor, his body shaking uncontrollably she wailed. " Markus baby! Wake up!" but he didn't stir. Under his head a pool of blood was forming and she was even more terrified. She shook him roughly, " Baby wake up! You don't owe me, we're even. Please wake up baby, I won't ever bring up you chasing other woman again I promise." her eyes filled with tears and they fell on his bare chest.

The pool of blood grew larger under his head, and he was growing paler. Tracy was so scared she started trembling, " Baby! Please wake up! If you wake up..I'll...I'll let you do that to me anytime you want! Everynight baby, I promise, just please wake up." But still he didn't wake up. In her anger she had forgotten how fragile he was compared to her and her supernatural strength.

Tracy didn't know much first aide, or medical techniques. But there was one on the ship who did, they had a Doctor on board, and although he was a drunk, he was better trained then she in saving a life. With out thinking she jumped off him, and hoisted him in her arms easily. She opened the door and moved down the hallway. The hall was lite by the red nightwatch lights and she moved easily, the halls being empty.

Tracy hadn't bothered to dress, and Cross was still nude from their earlier lovemaking, but she cradled him as she ran as fast as she could. As she got towards the end of the hallway, she yelled out. " Doc, Doc! Cross is hurt!"

She moved past Jess's door, yelling as she ran. The four women inside curious at the noise that was coming from her yells looked out their door. The sight of a nude Tusks, and Cross caused all four women to blush, but they followed behind her to the medical station at the end of the deck.

Doctor Hart was a elder man, who drank far to much and was currently on his second bottle for the day. At the sight of Tusks carrying Cross into the medical bay, with blood dripping from his head the doctor dropped the bottle of rum he was drinking. Slurriedly he said, " Put him on the automedic, and let me get a look at him." he staggered over to the medicomp mounted into the bulk head above the bed.

Tracy laid Cross down as gently as she could. Tears falling freely from her eyes, she grasped his hand and sank down to her knees beside the bed. Jess, Moira, Angel, and Delilah moved into the room and the Doctor waved them over.

Slurriedly he asked, " Can any of you read?" he was blinking rapidly, apparently his eyes wouldn't focus on the screen in front of him.

Jess nodded her head, " I can doc." she said, trying not to look at the captain nude. Ironically he was the first man she had ever seen that way, and she was finding it hard to pull her eyes away from his form.

The Doc however easily solved this problem, he dragged her over and faced her towards the screen. He waved over the other three women. He pointed at Angel, and Moira. " You two will be my nurses." he slurred. Delilah he pointed towards a bottle with a mask at it's end. " Put that to his face and squeeze. You can count right? Well count slowly to four while squeezing the bottle. You'll be breathing for him until I can get him stabilized." She moved to do so, gently placing the bottle to his face, and began squeezing as she counted softly to herself.

The Doctor turned to Angel, she wore a thin peach nightgown, and after pulling a set of electrodes from under the bed, he pointed at a small white box of connectors mounted on the wall. " I need you to apply those to his chest, arms, neck and legs. Try to get them in the same spot as the connectors on your drug dispenser. I assume you don't leave it on at all times, so you know where to connect them right?"

Angel nodded, she pulled out the connectors, and peeled away the backing, she started to stick them onto him, but realized he was still covered in sweat. Finding a towel, she dried his skin as she placed them.

The Doctor handed the electrodes to Moira, telling her where to connect them, she followed his directions carefully. She was intensely worried about the man who she was connecting the electrodes to. Despite his roguish attitude he had given her and her daughter sanctuary, and that was proof of his good heart to her.

Moira wore a fairly simple blue nightgown, that covered her from head to toe, taking the captains words about not revealing to much to the crew seriously. She didn't know what the electrodes did, but she was confident the doctor knew what he was doing. Or rather she prayed he did.

Finally the Doctor turned back to Jess, who was doing her best to stare at the screen, with its rows of information, numbers and other strange arcane symbols that made no sense to her mind. Jess shook her head and touched the screen, opening her mind, she felt for the consciousness she knew was behind the screen. She reached out and grasped a hold of the electronic spirit inside the machine. The world, the physical world that is, faded away. Her eyes no longer saw the world that was in front of them. Instead she saw the virtual one, which looked more then a little like a hospital reception desk. Behind it was a woman in a classical nurse outfit. Her skin was covered in flowing lines of code, and she lacked any facial features. But then she didn't need any, she was a simple visual representation of the computer AI inside the machine. Jess began asking the nurse numerous questions about the machine she inhabited. While it may have seemed their conversation lasted for many hours, it was actually little more then a few seconds.

As the virtual world faded from her sight, and was replaced by the physical one once more, she looked at the doctor, the lines of information on the screen no longer none sense. Jess had downloaded the complete instruction manual for the automedic bed. The twelve thousand page manual that explained each piece of the machine in absolute minute detail. Her fingers played over the small keypad on the side of the bed, and she activated the auto-stabilization feature of the device. From the sides of the bed, several small robotic arms sprang, syringes and other tools in their hands. They injected the Captain with pain relievers, and millions of nanobots whose job was to seek out internal injuries. An injection of Proto-cells, cells grown in a lab and able to be transformed into any type of cell needed in the repair of wounds by the nanobots was dispensed into his arm. She activated the IV feature, inserting a saline solution, along with a complex liquid filled with protein, carbs, calcium and multitudes of other essential nutrients.

The Doctor waved the other women away as Jess activated the other features of the device. Blood was drawn, this would be cloned via the machines under the automedic unit. Within seconds another IV was inserted into his arm, and the blood transfusion began. She looked back at the screen reading the information displayed their as the robotic machine continued to repair his skull. " The automedic has him stabilized Doc. There was a momentary flash under the captains head, then a sub screen opened on the main screen. Jess looked at this for a moment her eyes widened in concern.

The Doctor couldn't make sense of the x-ray, mainly because his eyes wouldn't focus on it long enough to make an imagine, other then a blur. He looked at Jess, seeing from her expression she could make sense of it. As her hands continued to input rapid commands into the keypad, he wondered how she had suddenly became an expert in its use. She looked at the doctor, her concern evident, another syringe injected into his arm and she frowned as the machine beeped a warning at her.

" The back of his skull is broken, there isn't any brain damage that the machine can tell, but his brains bleeding and swelling up." she said quickly. At her words Tusks wept even harder. Moira not knowing that Tusks had been the one to injure him, placed a hand to her shoulder, trying to comfort the big ogre woman.

The Doctor's eyes widened, he would need to drill a hole into the captains skull to relieve the pressure, least his brain expand to far and damage itself to the point he went brain dead. He said this out loud, and stumbled to get the laser drill and wash up before he performed the procedure. Tusks wept louder, she knew the doctor was to drunk to perform the procedure. Cross was going to die, and she had killed him.

Jess however shook her head. " Are you _loco_? As drunk as you are, there's no way I'm going to let you operate on the captain. I'll guide the nano's in de-swelling his brain." she said

The Doctor shook his head, " You said the automedic detects his brains bleeding. Even if you could get the tissue to stop swelling, his brain will be under to much pressure from the blood filling his skull. We have to get some extraction of the blood from his skull, or it won't matter. Besides when did you become a doctor?" he asked her confusedly.

Jess shook her head. " I'm a Telemechanic." she responded as she continued to type at a frenzied pace, finally in annoyance she touched the screen and closed her eyes. The screen flashed through a series of commands, the machine responding to her thoughts instead of the crude input of a keypad far faster.

The Doctor shook his head, watching the screen flash. He stumbled to the counter along the wall, and took out an auto-syringe. He keyed it for a good triple does of stim, and injected this into his neck. The powerful stimulant cleared the alcohol from his mind and made it easier to think. He decided it best to get the extra bodies out of here. Looking at Cross's hand in Tusks own, he could see that Cross's fingers had gone purple. Tusk was squeezing it so hard she had broken it, and cut off the circulation to his digits. The doctor thought it best to get her away from Cross before she finished the job of killing him in her grief.

He walked back to the automedic, " Ladies, I'm gonna have to ask you all to leave the medical bay while me and Jess work on the Captain, we'll keep you informed of his condition." They noticed his speech was no longer slurred and he seemed to be stable on his feet. Moira nodded her head, and along with Angel gently removed Tusks hand from Cross's. They helped the ogre woman to her feet, and guided her out, Delilah followed them closing the medical bay door behind them.

They Guided Tusks back to her and Cross's room. At the sight of the blood trial along the hall and the pool in her room, Tusks wept even more. Moira's eyes widened at the pool of blood on the floor. Then a sudden fear hit her and she grabbed Tusks, " Who hurt the Captain? Are they still on board? Should we sound the alarm?" she shrieked thinking of her daughter sleeping in her room.

Tusks tear filled eyes closed as she knelt down beside the pool of blood. She put her hand to a spot in the floor and sobbed even more. She had dented the floor with his skull. Her hand was completely covered in her husbands blood, the dent making a large bowl for it. Cross had lost a lot of blood judging by the depth of the pool. Tusks however sobbingly answered Moira. " The person who hurt Markus is still here." she looked at the three stunned women, " But there's no need to sound the alarm, she won't be hurting anyone else on the ship, she didn't mean to hurt him." she said her voice pain filled.

The three looked at her in more then a little confusion, and she shook her head. " I hurt him again. I don't mean to, but he just makes me so mad sometimes!" her fists clinched as she said this. In horror the three women looked at her. She shook her head and wiped at her tears, smearing his blood on her face. This had the effect of making her weep more.

Moira and Delilah moved to get buckets and mops. Angel stood watching Tusks, wondering how many times she had done this to the captain, and why.

Four hours after Tusks had beaten Cross, the sun rose. The Dragonray was just now pulling into Port Harbor, they had chosen to dock at the Amtrans harbor instead of the main pirate harbor. The docking fee's were higher, but the crew considered it worth it due to the more secure area. Amtrans maintained its own security forces, and these patrolled the area regularly. Amtrans was a fairly open and free wheeling company, and it allowed the Black market to run a number of above board operations. Gambling dens, arena's for blood sports, prostitution, drug dens, slave markets, and a number of other illicit activities were not only allowed, but unrestricted, so long as all participants had the proper paperwork. Which meant they had paid the necessary fees, and taxes.

Bookie, the Quartermaster had luckily spoken to the captain prior to the little incident that had sent him to the medical ward. They planned to keep the Sea Samas, everything else got sold. Bookie had already arranged a buyer by the time they made port and that buyer was already waiting to go over the cargo, deliver payment, and take possession of the goods. The actual sale was conducted by a man in a fashionable business suit who quickly looked over the cargo. He had brought a pair of pilots with him who quickly looked over the armor making certain all was in good condition. They reported that the armor was brand new. This increased the sale price by another twenty percent. This done, they inspected the gold and silver, and a final price was agreed upon. Bookie took their pay in NG/MI Dollars, the most stable currency, besides the black markets own black credits, in North America. The CS economic collapse had made their universal credits nearly worthless to most folks.

This done they unloaded the cargo, and the man along with his private guards left. The Quartermaster then went to find Tusks. He found her in her room, sitting on her bunk, staring at a large dent in the floor. Bookie knew that Tusks had pummeled Cross nearly to death, this wasn't the first time she had beaten him so badly he had to take a trip to the medical ward.

Tusks wasn't drinking, which was good, but she was chain smoking like a chimney. Bookie coughed to get her attention and she looked up at him. " The cash good Bookie?" she asked rather melancholy.

He nodded, " Yes ma'am." he said. He pulled out a small palm computer, and proceeded to give her the details of the sale. " After expenses, and the ship fund, the average will receive ten thousand dollars. Those who receive two shares, twenty thousand. You and the Captain will both receive fifty thousand. Cross told me not to give the little idiot his Ten percent, so I've set aside fifty thousand for him, as he and I agreed." he explained.

Tusks nodded her head, " Sounds good Bookie." she said with the same sense of melancholy.

He knew she was suffering from the guilt she always experienced after beating Cross nearly to death. Truthfully Bookie couldn't figure why Cross put up with it, and didn't just dump the Ogre woman off on some little sand bar and sail away. But Bookie kept these thoughts to himself, " Cross planned on giving everyone shore leave for two weeks while we re-supply and repairs were made. Should I cancel that or tell the men to come get their pay and take their two weeks leave?" he asked her.

She nodded, " Ya. Give them their two weeks leave. We aren't moving until Cross wakes up." she said.

Bookie nodded, then he walked over and picked up her and Cross's debit cards from her offered hand. He inserted them into his palm computer, transferring their shares onto them. This done he handed them back to her. Then he turned and left, heading to the mess hall. Within a few minutes Tusks heard his voice over the PA system, announcing for all crew to come collect pay.

Shortly afterward she heard the sounds of men happily grabbing their bags and heading off ship. Two weeks of leave after a successful job was enough for most of them to be excited. Most planned to spend that money on hookers, booze and maybe a pit fight or two. Some were headed to a NG/MI bank to transfer those dollars to loved ones in other towns. The new Norcom transmitters making such long distance communications, and transfer of dollars possible, so long as they were around the Great lakes region.

An hour or so later a soft knock came at her door. Tusks crossed to the door quickly, hoping to hear news of her husbands condition. She opened it to find Angel outside her door. The juicer was wearing a JFL jersey, El Paso, she thought. She was wearing a pair of short cutoff sweatpants, and wearing a pair of pink bunny slippers.

Tusks raised an eyebrow and Angel shrugged, " All the men are off the ship. So I figured I could move about comfortably." she answered at Tusks unasked question.

Tusks smiled at the Juicers attempt at humor. Angel playfully punched her shoulder, " Why don't you throw on a pair of shorts, and one of Cross's shirts and meet us in our cabin. Jess talked Glitch into jacking us a direct feed of the JFL division finals. Four games, eight hours, all girls. We'll eat chocolate, order some pizza, paint our nails, do our hair, and tell soppy stories of past boyfriends. Come on it'll be great." she said smiling.

Tusks chuckled " Only if I can smoke, if not I'm pulling rank and lighting up anyway." she said smiling. She really didn't feel like socializing, but figured it was better then her normal shore leave activities. Sitting in her room, wearing a pair of Cross's shorts, and wearing his shirt eating ice cream and crying while watching old pre-rifts romance movies.

She waved Angel in, who entered swiftly. Tusks unhooked her bra, and dropped it into the cloths basket by the closet. She took out one of Cross's shirts, a JFL jersey of Los Alamos, she slipped it over her head, and pulled on a pair of his boxers. Then she put her hair up into a tail, she turned and grabbed her pack of cigarettes, and a extra one, just in case. She sprayed some deodorant under her arms, and moved to where Angel stood.

Angel eyed her legs for a moment, and the covering of black hair on them. She raised one of her strawberry blonde eyebrows. " Maybe we'll shave our legs together to." she said teasingly.

Tusks shrugged, " Y'all would have to teach me how to. I was raised in a slave pit in Atlantis, and we ogre women aren't typically used as sex toys, so I never learned how to. Cross freed me from my former master, and he never has seemed to mind me being hairy, so I've never learned." she explained.

Angel chuckled, " Well we can teach you, not a problem." then worried she might have offended her, quickly added, " If you want to that is."

Tusks smiled, " believe it or not I'd love to learn how to make myself pretty for Cross. He never complains about my looks, but I wonder if I looked better if he'd be less willing to chase others skirts. Or at least give me a compliment." she said somewhat sadly.

Angel shook her head, " You and Cross have a very strange relationship don't you?"

Tusks smiled, " That's putting it mildly. I think we're married, he doesn't." she said sadly.

Angel looked at her confusedly as the two made their way to the cabin shared by the women of the ship. " So you think of him as a husband, but he doesn't think of you as his wife? Have you ever explained the way you feel to him?" she asked.

Tusks shrugged, " Only when we fight, and I pummel him." she said softly

Angel shook her head as they moved to enter the room, but stopped " You might try talking to him about your feelings when your not beating him senseless. Men tend to react better that way." she said seriously.

Tusks looked at her for a moment, the idea never having crossed her mind to talk to him about it when they weren't fighting. Shrugging she shook her head. " I guess the slave pens didn't provide me with a good model for a healthy relationship." she said.

Angel smiled and put an arm around her, " Don't worry Tusks, your not the only woman to not know what a healthy relationship is. One day I'll tell you way I became a juicer, and you'll probably laugh your tail off." she said somewhat merrily, somewhat melencholy.

Entering the room Tusks grinned. " Please y'all call me Tracy, Tusks is my working name. And I bet it involved a guy huh?" she said to the juicer and room in general.

Angel smiled softly, " Something like that Tracy." then she moved to sit in a chair they had set up in front of the TV. Lorna immediately ran over and sat down in the Juicer woman's lap, a smaller El Paso jersey on, and two black lines under her eyes. She carried her little hand made doll under her arm and happily giggled as she whispered into Angel's ear.

Angel grinned and nodded her head, " Thanks for waiting for me. I can't believe El Paso made the first round of division this season. I'm so excited! My big brother's their quarterback and I can't wait to see how my bubby did!" she said happily.

Jess laughed, she handed Angel a can of cola eying her, " Seriously?" Tracy noticed a small screen behind Jess's head, mounted along the wall of her bunk. It showed Cross laying inside a protective glass case, the robotic medical unit overseeing him. The screen also had dozens of symbols on it, and Tracy assumed this told Jess if anything was wrong with him. Tracy sat down beside Moira who was dressed similarly, an El Paso jersey, and her red hair pulled into a tail.

Angel nodded her head, " I swear he is! If he's still alive after the game or games, I'll try and introduce y'all to him when I go visit him. He's only been a juicer for a couple of years, so he shouldn't be on last call. But The JFL is rough so he mighta got greased during a game."

Moira looked at her in confusion, " Last Call?" she asked.

Tracy answered her, " The juicer augmentation burns out the body fairly quickly, five to seven years is the longest a juicer lives after getting juiced. The last few years or year though of a juicers life are rough, and its commonly referred to as last call."

Moira held a hand to her mouth, " That's horrible!" she said, looking at her friend she was worried for her.

Angel shook her head, " Enough talk of last call. Let's watch us some FOOTBALL!!!" she said loudly.

The other women laughed and Jess shook her head, she was wearing a Juarez jersey and playfully said, " Brother or not, my teams so kicking El Paso's tail. We lost to you all last year, ain't happening this time _Chiquita_." she said boastfully.

Tracy laughed, " That's why Juarez couldn't keep a decent secondary all year long! They got rookies covering a set of veteran players. Lopez and Sueltz are fragging phenomenal !"

Jess laughed, " Both are out for the game with pulled ligaments. El Paso had to go sign a pair of free agents!" she said happily. She glanced at the monitor behind her head, making certain Cross was ok.

Tracy saw the look and asked, " How is he?" her voice held more then a bit of concern.

Jess shrugged, " We have him stabilized. I programed the nano's to open a pair of holes in his skull, and I got the swelling to stop. The nano's are currently rebuilding his skull, and the Doctor figures he'll be fine tomorrow. He may not feel fine, but he'll be able to move back to your room." she explained.

Then she gave Tracy a look the ogre woman never expected from the skinny latino woman. It was one of anger, " Next time that you beat on him like that though, I'm going to make certain its the last time _comprende_?"

Tracy almost laughed at the idea of the little woman attacking her. But then she remembered Jess's ability to mentally control machines, and thought better of it. Tracy really did feel bad about what had happened, she always did, yet it seemed she was always beating him nearly to death. Tracy shook her head, tears in her eyes. " I don't know why I keep losing control and doing it. Every time we fight I get so angry, and I...I... I just have to hit him. Then after I do, I can't stop, and each time it goes further and further. I nearly killed him this time. I think I did kill him, you just were able to bring him back. I don't want to hurt him, but I always do!" she said, tears lining her face.

Moira laid a hand on Tracy's shoulder, " Dearie. If you truly love him, you'll stop hurting him. One day your going to take it to far, and no one will be able to save the lad." she said softly.

Tracy still crying felt a small hand take hers, she looked to see little Lorna holding her hand. Tracy was surprised the little girl would come near her, she being a ogre, but the little girl with her red hair and innocent eyes had a serious look on her face. Tracy smiled at the girl, trying to look non-threatening, thinking that this had taken great courage on her part to get so close to the large woman. " Momma always says to walk away when your really mad. That way you don't do, or say something you regret later." Lorna said to her in perfect clarity.

Tracy blinked away the tears, smiling at her words, she playfully poked the little girls nose, " Then your momma is a much wiser woman then me. I'm going to have to try that from now on huh?" she asked her.

Lorna nodded her head solemnly. Then the little girl moved back over to sit in Angel's lap. Her gaze riveted to the large TV on the bulkhead. Luckily the game wouldn't start until Jess pushed the play button on the remote.

Tracy smiled, wiping the tears form her eyes again. " Lets start this little shindig!" she said in as happy of a tone as she could manage.

Moira raised a hand, " Before we do, I wanna ta ask ye, whats the JFL, and why are we all wearing these shirts?"

Angel laughed, " The JFL is the juicer football league. It's a sport, you'll see and we can explain the rules as we watch. As to the shirts, these are the jersey's the players wear while playing." she explained.

Moira nodded, she had watched the highland games, and clan sports as a young lady. It had been very entertaining to watch the men throw the great cambers, and stones. She nodded her head for them to continue.

But Tracy asked, " Wait, wheres Delilah?"

" She went to the bank, and is picking up the pizza. She should be back here soon." Angel said. As if on cue they heard steps coming down the hallway, and Delilah entered the room, five pizza boxes, and three bags on top of them in her arms. She set these down on Jess's bunk. She kicked her shoes off, and slipped her feet into a pair of house slippers. Standing up she pulled the pair of sweatpants off, revealing a pair of tight sport shorts. She shook her head, shivering.

" It's fragging cold out there." she said to the room. She pulled her arms into her own jersey, a Kingsdale one, and soon popped her arms back out of it, throwing her bra into her dirty cloths bin. Then she sat down next to Jess, handing out plates. " The pizza place thinks we're insane by-the-way." she said to the room.

As all of them turned to look at her in confusion she laughed, " Lets see, two extra large meat lovers. Two extra large Pepperoni lovers, and one extra large seafood lovers. And three large chef salads, with ranch dressing." she said laughing.

The rest of them laughed with her, as they moved to get some of the pizza and salad. Soon everyone was situated and Angel nearly thumped Jess to start the game already. Laughing at the juicers lack of patience, Jess hit the play button. The girls night in had begun.


	6. Chapter Five

Chapter 6:

Glitch's Glitch.

Glitch wasn't happy. He should have made enough off this job to retire, instead he made the same chump change he always did. His buyer was screaming mad, and threatening to no longer do business with him. To add insult to injury, the cute ship's engineer had flirted with him enough that he thought she was interested. She'd told him that watching the JFL made her hot, and that she would really appreciate it if he could hook her up with the broadcast. He'd hacked into the cable companies pay-per-view server of the JFL division finals, spoofing it so that she could watch the games. Then after he'd done that, thinking she meant to watch the games with him and get herself worked up before they slipped away, she had booted him out of her room telling him it was a 'girls night only.'

Glitch sat at an internet cafe typing furiously, he had two IM screens open and was trying to locate the leak in his network. If this cargo hadn't been worth something, he knew that the pirates he was currently staying with would have happily shot him and tossed his body overboard. Luckily they had made some decent cred, else he wouldn't be here now to be having these two IM chat's. He also knew better then to get revenge on the engineer by cutting her feed, the juicer chick in her room would probably grease him for it. So he focused on the things he knew wouldn't get him killed. He sipped his soy mocha latte with extra foam, and continued his IM conversations.

One was with a fellow hacker, a woman whose handle was Icy. Icy was also experiencing something of a series of misfortunes, but not on the same level he was. She worked the Atlantic coast, mainly the juicy NGR/Free Quebec shipping routes run by Amtrans. She had discovered info that suggested that Amtrans had some sort of deal worked out with Titan Robotics to begin transporting their goods to places like England, The Republic of South Africa, and The New Roman Republic.

Icy had sold that Intel to a mysterious buyer, that she had never been able to really peg down as to who it was. The problem came in that all the ships she had sold the routes for, had been hit not by pirates, but the CS Navy. Now Amtrans was doing all in their power to locate the source of the leak, and she worried it was only a matter of time before she was outed.

Glitch wouldn't out her she knew, he was a fellow gang member and the Consortium just didn't out its own. So she wasn't worried about that. She was however wondering what she could do to get herself out of the company's crosshairs. Glitch unfortunately didn't have any suggestions, although he wished he did. He liked Icy, although he'd never actually seen her in real life.

Glitch's second IM window was with another gang member, Lake Ape. Lake Ape was a special member of the gang, a part of the elite defenders of the Consortium, the Watchdogs. Their job was to perform over watch for the group as a whole, to find leaks and stop them. Glitch had heard from Lake Ape that the gang was experiencing more then a little difficulties. Several members of the gang were reporting similar problems, missing cargoes, or incorrect routes, or as in Icy's case a unpopular buyer. Now-a-days working for the CS wasn't only unpopular, it was bad for business. A group that regularly sold intel to them would find it's web of contracts quickly closing up. Lake Ape promised to look into the problems, then he signed off.

Glitch went back to his chat with Icy. She was really worried about Amtrans finding out about her little goof-up. He could understand why, Amtrans was rumored to be, like so many new company's that were appearing in the wake of the Tolkeen war, a Black Market company. Owned, operated and controlled by the criminal organization. They all had catchy names, and very specialized business areas. Amtrans, short for American Transportation was a shipping company. It owned a fleet of ships, cargo planes, and overland transports. Amtrans had negotiated the purchase of the St. Lawarance Seaway locks from Free Quebec. They were snatching up shipping contracts to almost every nation along the great lakes, and beyond.

They were accomplishing this rapid monopolization by being cut-throat and draconian. Their corporate raiders were accomplished at buying up smaller company's and integrating them into the whole of their organization. The company was an active participant in piracy, buying ships, and goods from the many pirate gangs, no questions asked. But those pirates who thought to raid Amtrans ships, and sell the company it's own goods back quickly disappeared.

Glitch was more then a little concerned for Icy's safety. He was not very experienced with woman, his only girlfriends being online. Sipping his latte, he struck on an idea, and decided to run with it. His fingers flew across the keyboard typing rapidly. " Where are you IRL?" he typed.

Icy responded quickly, " Glitterville, MI." she answered.

Glitch shook his head, he wasn't sure where that was, but figured it wasn't far. " Book a flight to Port Harbor, P.K.M ASAP." he typed.

A small face appeared in his chat window, little question marks above it and looking confused.

Glitch laughed, " You can stay with me. I'm living with pirates right now. They won't ask any questions, we can lay low for a few months, let this all blow over." He hit the enter key and his text appeared in the window.

Icy was silent for a few minutes, and he worried the connection had been lost. But finally he saw the message at the bottom of the little chat box where it told the user the time of the last sent message say, " Icy is typing a message."

Finally her words appeared in the little box. " I'm don't think you'd want to meet me IRL. My appearance is....strange to humans." it said.

Glitch was a bit shocked at this news, but finally he shook his head. Icy was a friend and in need, it didn't matter what she looked like. He quickly typed back, " ROFLMAO! I thought you were human. But that doesn't matter. Your one of my closest homies, offer still applies." he added a little face that was winking conspiratorially to his text and hit enter.

Again it was some time before she answered, " OK, but don't say I didn't warn you. Just promise me you'll keep an open mind and remember you've known me for sometime. And don't worry, I won't eat you!" she added her own smiley face to her text.

Glitch felt a trickle of fear as he wondered what she was. " Not to sound like a Coalition freakazoid, but what are you?" he asked.

A laughing face appeared in response. " You'll see." she answered him cryptically.

Glitch smiled, Icy was always answering cryptically. " OK. Can I ask if your really a girl?"

A little face with devil horns appeared on the screen laughing. " I have all the female bits that would interest you as a man. I bet if you can look past some parts of my appearance, you'll find me incredibly attractive." she teased him.

Glitch was more then a little excited by this answer, " Cool, cause were going to have to share a bunk while you're with us. And the idea of snuggling up to a man in the tight confines of a ship bunk just isn't for me." he added a little winking face to his text.

Another laughing face appeared on his screen. " Ok! I've never slept beside a man before, I'm looking forward to it. Just keep a thin blanket, I'll keep you warm, you wouldn't like the smell of me sweating!" she answered.

Glitch grinned, she was teasing him, but he found himself interested despite the fact that she wasn't human. " Soooo, your a virgin?" he figured she'd either take it as a joke, or answer him if she was interested.

A little blushing face appeared on his screen, " Yes I am. The only guy's I've ever met IRL run away from me. Why? You planning on deflowering me?"

Glitch smiled widely, " The thoughts crossed my mind if your interested. You'll probably find me ugly as all get out though." he typed back.

Again a little blushing face appeared. " Actually I find almost every human man I've seen incredibly cute. Part of my upbringing I guess. I just really like humans, so I wouldn't worry about that. I'm more worried your gonna be terrified when you see me, then of me finding you attractive. Besides think of it this way. If you can actually look at me without running away, your guaranteed to be attractive to me, based on lack of choice if nothing else!" she teased.

Glitch smiled at her words, he started to type back but a second line of text appeared, " Ok my flight leaves in an hour. I've got to pack up somethings, and then head to the airport. My flight schedule says I'm to arrive at Port Harbor at midnight. I'll be wearing a robe that covers me from head to toe. It's white, just so you know." she typed.

Glitch looked at his clock, that was only about four hours from now. " OK. I'll be waiting, I'll be holding a sign that says 'Mrs. Johnson.' So you'll know its me." he answered.

A nodding face appeared, " OK, see you then sweetheart." she answered. Then she signed off. Glitch decided to head back to the ship and shower. He walked outside and hailed a Taxi, the taxi stopped, and got in. He told the driver to take him to the pier and sat back thinking. Yes he was having a bad run of luck, but he could turn it around. He figured Cross would take him and Icy on as crew, after the battle against the CS he had shown he was more then useful. The cab pulled up to the pier and he slotted his debit card into the reader in the back seat. The door wouldn't open until the fare was paid, but he had plenty of credit. He keyed in the amount of tip to deduct for the driver. The fare was deducted, and the door opened siliently, the cabbie thanked him for the tip, and then after he had exited, pulled away.

Glitch quickly made his way to the ship, Some of the crew, those with family's had returned and were performing their normal shore leave duties. A pair of them waved him past and he nodded absently as he made his way to the guest cabin. He entered and sat his laptop down, and grabbed a towel from his suitcase. He removed his cloths, throwing them in the dirty cloths basket, which every cabin had now thanks to Moira and Delilah.

He showered, scrubbing himself real good, he was after all going to meet a girl in just a short time. He found the mystery of Icy's species to be exciting. He was going over some possibilities as he went about getting ready to met her. He figured she must be a race that was fairly frightening. A Devilman, or in this case woman was a good possibility. But he then dismissed it, Devilmen were common enough that most humans didn't find them all that strange. He'd never heard of a reptilian race that was attractive, so he skipped over any of them. Then an idea struck him. She must be some fairly rare species. Probably escaped from Atlantis, or her family deposited by a rift some where.

He finished his shower, and started shaving, he wanted to look the best he could for her. He took his time, going through the few cloths he had brought along with him. None of them were very fashionable, but he decided to work with what he had.

Glitch spent the hours until Icy's plane arrived in a frantic attempt to make his appearance perfect. His phone beeped at him and he snatched it from the table. There was a text message from Icy, saying her plane was making its final approach to the airport, and she'd be there in a little over fifteen minutes. He yelped in dismay, he'd lost track of time, he sent a reply back saying he was on his way. He ran for the door, but then remembered he needed the sign. He grabbed a sheet of paper, and wrote on it. Then folded it up and put it into his coat pocket. He put this on and then ran for the door, calling a cab as he moved.

By the time he got to the drive off of the pier where the ship was docked, the cab was just pulling up. He hopped in quickly telling the cabbie to make for the airport, and to hurry. The Cabbie, the same as his earlier ride, laughed and nodded his head. " Hang on mon!" he said in his thickly accented voice. The man was clearly from the Caribbean league.

The cabs tires spun out as the driver hit the accelerator, they whipped around corners and soon Glitch could only hang on and do his best not to scream like a woman. The blocks flew by, as did cars,and pedestrians. Port Harbor was a fairly big town, but the Airport was in the smack center of the island that the town was built on. Which was about a thirty minute drive at the best of times, although Glitch didn't know that. He sent Icy a text telling her he'd be a few minutes late. He hoped she wouldn't be to mad at him, but her answer was a happy laugh and ok. She'd find a spot and wait she said.

The Cabbie however did a good job of getting him their quicker then the thirty minutes it normally took. He pulled into the airport as Icy sent a text saying she was in a coffee shop in the main terminal, called 'Unholy Grounds.' He slotted his debit card, paying the fair, and asked the cabbie to wait for him, as he would be right back.

The cabbie nodded, " Sure mon." he said, then turned his radio up as Glitch exited the open door. He noticed the sign on top of the cab switch to off duty, and he smiled. Then he made his way into the terminal.

It took him awhile to find the coffee shop. Despite being midnight, the airport was very busy as pirate crews flew in and out to other locations. He had to consult a map of the terminal to find the coffee shop. This done he downloaded the map to his palm computer, and used its traking feature to find his way there.

It wasn't hard to spot Icy sitting at a small table, a cup of coffee in her hand, reading a newspaper. Like she said she wore a white robe that covered her from head to toe. Her hood had a white veil made to prevent one from seeing her face. The hood was fairly large, and she had a small hole in the mask through which she sipped her coffee through a straw. He walked up to her table, and sat down. The hood moved to where she could see him, and he heard a deep chuckle come from underneath it.

The depth of the voice that came from under the hood made him wonder even more as to what she was. It was almost demonic in its sound. However he pushed the thought that she was some sort of demonic creature from his mind as he said, " You weren't kidding about the robe covering you from head to toe." he smiled as he said this.

Again the deep chuckle issued forth from under the hood. " Well I don't want to scare anyone when I travel." she said. Her voice, while deep had a very feminine tone to it, and she seemed to purr as she talked. Glitch found himself enchanted by the sound of her voice.

She leaned over the table closer to him. " Ready to get out of here? I can't tell you how bad I want to get this thing off! I hate wearing my travel cloths." she said.

He chuckled, nodding he moved to help her with her bags. But all she had was a case for her laptop like his own, and a small backpack. He raised a eyebrow at her lack of luggage and asked if that was all she brought. She giggled, making a almost growling noise as she did so.

" I travel light." she said to him. He could only nod he took her backpack from her, even though it was neon pink in color and slung it over his shoulder. It didn't weigh much and he wondered at just what all she had brought. Shrugging he offered her his arm. Her hooded head looked at it for a moment, then she giggled again as she slid her arm through his. He smiled at her as she did so, and although he couldn't see it under her mask, she smiled back. He lead her towards the terminal entrance where the cab waited for them.

As they walked he noticed she was shorter then he, Glitch wasn't a tall guy to begin with, but she was several inches shorter. He also noticed she walked faster then him, she kept slowing her strides as they walked. " Still trying to figure out what I am?" she teased him as they walked.

Glitch smiled as they exited the terminal and found the cab right where he had left it. He opened the door for her and she slide in easily. As she sat he noticed a bulge in her midsection, and he wondered at this. He slide in next to her and closed the door. The cabbie looked in his mirror at Glitch, if he noticed the robbed figure in his mirror he made no mention of it. "Back to the ship mon?" he asked.

Glitch nodded, and the cabbie pulled out nice and easy. Glitch leaned over, whispering into what he thought was her ear. " Are you pregnant? I thought you said you were a virgin?" he said teasingly.

The hooded head looked at him for a moment, then looked at her midriff. She saw what had gotten his attention and she giggled again. " Thats not my stomach." she whispered back to him. The closer she got to him the more he noticed a scent not unlike a dog's.

He raised an eyebrow and she shrugged her slight shoulders, " You'll just have to wait and see." she said teasingly.

Glitch sighed, but then put his arm around her, pulling her close. She seemed to happily move closer to him, although she made a slight whining noise, not unlike a dogs as she scooted her rear around, finding a comfortable position. Then she seemed to sigh and lean into him happily. He let his hand fall over her breast and she giggled the same deep way as before. She moved so that his hand fully cupped it, and playfully squeezed his thigh. She did so a few more times, until he got the hint, he gently squeezed her breast. This made her purr again and she rubbed against him a little more.

"So are you scared of what I am yet?" she asked him teasingly. He chuckled, shrugging, he was both excited and nervous and told her so. This made her giggled even more, she patted his leg, and whispered, " Well this is the closest a guy has ever been to me, so I'm enjoying myself immensely."

Again he chuckled, " Are you hungry?" he asked her. She thought for a moment and nodded her head yes. A quick discussion about what to eat was ended when they saw a all night Chinese restaurant along the road. He pointed to it and the cabbie, who was watching them in his mirror nodded. He pulled into the drive through. The order booth was on her side of the car and she leaned back to let him order. Glitch wasn't a very macho guy, so he waved her to order. She giggled and squeezed his thigh again.

" What'cha want?" she asked him happily. He decided on the orange chicken, and an appetizer sampler with fried rice. She turned and began to order.

The little boxed speaker and microphone suffered from a bit of feedback as a little voice asked them what they wanted. Icy quickly responded, " I need an order of Orange chicken, with fried rice and a sampler appetizer bundle. Then I need a order of your teriyaki chicken stickers, but can I get them raw." the little voice was confused, but it said she could. Then she continued, " I also need a order of pepper steak, but I want the beef raw. And fried rice with that. And can I get like four of your jumbo fried shrimp with sweet and sour sauce?" she finished.

The little voice asked her if she wanted the shrimp raw. She laughed and told it no. Then the little voice told them their total and they pulled forward. Glitch looked at her strangely for a minute and she shrugged, " I like my meat raw." she said. She was worried this would bother him, but he shrugged it off. Some people were like that he thought. A Few minutes later their order was passed through the window, the lady at the counter told them the raw items were marked as such. She paid and the cab moved off towards the ship again. Glitch put his arm around her again and she happily curled up against him.

The two didn't talk much as they rode towards the ship. Soon however the pier came into veiw and Icy sat up, the Dragonray was lite up by the dock lights and she was more then a bit impressed. " Is that the ship we're staying on?" she asked him excitedly.

He nodded, and as the cab pulled to a stop he slotted his debt card and paid the fare, along with a good tip for all the cabbies trouble. " Be seein' ya mon!" the cabbie said as Glitch and Icy exited the vehicle. They carried their food and moved quickly towards the ship. Walking up the ramp and on board. The night watch waved them past without much thought. Glitch was allowed to be here, if he brought a date back with him, that was his business. The ship rules said that whatever his guest did he was responsible for so they weren't concerned.

Glitch lead her into his cabin, their cabin he corrected himself, and held the door for her. She moved past him agilely and he closed the door. Then he set their stuff down on the table. Icy looked around the room for a minute, " Wow! This is so much better then my old apartment." she said happily.

Glitch chuckled and gave her a quick tour, " We have our own bathroom, and shower. And I hacked the JFL Division playoffs, so we can watch that while we eat, if you want." his voice carried a bit of excitement in it and she giggled again.

" Can we sit on the bed and eat?" she asked him teasingly. Glitch smiled, he picked up the two bags their food had come in and she giggled as he sat down.

" You can take the robe off now." he said to her. Again she giggled, she moved to lock the door, and at first Glitch felt a moment of panic, but it passed. She moved over towards him and slowly began undoing the belt at her waist.

As she was doing so she looked at at, " Remember what I said to you earlier. You've known me for some time now. I have no intentions of hurting you. And before you ask, or scream at seeing me. No I'm not one of those things that eats people. I may like raw meat, but I've no intention of eating you, or anyone you know. Unless you know a lot of rabbits, I just can't help myself with those little tasty morsals!" she said giggling.

He nodded his head, his heart thumping in his chest. Her hands seemed to stop in their movements as she wondered if she should really show him what she was. Finally she decided to go ahead, and she undid the robed quickly. She opened it to reveal a wonderfully feminine body, perfectly curved and proportioned in a way as to drive a man mad from desire.

Save she was covered in very short white fur. She was nude under the robe, but no bare skin showed. He noticed her legs were that of a human, until they reached her ankle, at which point her legs became very canine like as she seemed to have a double ankle. The bulge at her middle was revealed to be a large bushy tail of white and black fur. He noticed she had black fur on her legs and caves as well that made it look like she wore socks. She had tied her tail around her waist and she trembled as she removed the rope holding it into place. The tail was fox like and it began swishing back and forth nervously as she waited for his response to her appearance. The robe fell away to reveal her very large, very full breasts which were also fur covered save for her nipples. She was unwrapping her arms which were covered in thick wrappings and gloves. Like her legs the white fur on her arms changed to black. So that it looked like she wore a pair of black gloves that ended at her elbow.

He finally looked at her face, following the flowing locks of white hair that spilled from her head. His heart nearly stopped as he looked at her visage for a moment. She had a canine like head, with a small muzzle and canine nose, two canine like ears were atop that head, and both swiveled nervously. Her face was fox like as well, and she had a pair of sparkling blue eyes. Both of those eyes seemed to be filled with terror as he looked at her.

Glitch was dumbstruck, his mouth opened but nothing came out at first, then he found his voice. " Oh my god." he whispered.

At his words she moved forward, taking his hands into her smaller ones, her fingers were clawed. She lifted his hands to her face, letting them feel her furred cheeks, hoping to calm him. " Before you say it, I'm not a Zenith moon warper, or a werewolf, or a host of other demonic canine like creatures you've heard of. I'm a mutant snow fox, like a dog boy, but not a dog." she said her voice panic filled.

Glitch however hadn't heard a word of it, he was transfixed as he stared at her. " You're beautiful." he finished. Without thinking he leaned forward, kissing her. Despite her fox like muzzle she had lips, not unlike a humans. She moaned softly as he probed her mouth with his tongue, soon she returned his efforts with her own, which he was surprised to discover was more human like then fox.

She pulled away with more then a little reluctance. She was breathing heavily, but she smiled at him. " we have to learn how to do that so I can breath to. You humans have noses designed for that sort of thing, mines kinda in the way." She said breathlessly.

Glitch chuckled, his hands moved across her body, and despite the fur he had to admit, her body felt no different then a human woman's. He pulled her up onto the bed, she was still smiling. She allowed him to pull her up, she curled up beside him and playfully squeezed his thigh. " You promised me dinner and a movie first." she teased.

He laughed, but turned the TV on and flipped on the game, " You like the JFL?" he asked. As he started pulling out little white boxes and a set of paper plates. She sniffed the boxes, her nose telling her easily which ones where hers. He chuckled as she did so, and handed her a plate.

She smiled at him and winked, " Nothing gets me as hot as watching a group of guys beat the crap out of each other." she said teasingly. Then a thought crossed her mind. " Are you going to be ok with me eating raw meat before we.... you know." she waved a hand embarrassed.

He laughed, " You mean you don't brush your teeth?" he teased. She grinned back at him flipping an errant lock of her white hair from her eyes.

" Well ya! I'm not an animal you know." she said winking at him. Her tail playfully tickled him, and he smiled at her.

" What else can you do with that tail?" he asked her playfully. She smiled and raised her eyebrows in a mischievous manner.

" I guess we'll just have to discover the limits of what I can do with my tail." she teased. Glitch trembled as she worked her tail up under his shirt, rubbing his chest with it.

Jess threw her soda at the wall screaming, " Pass interference!"

The other woman laughed at her outburst. Currently they were in the eighth quarter of overtime, going into the ninth the score was tied at 24-24. Her team Juarez had just missed a short pass of twenty five yards that she could have caught. Normal JFL games were allowed four quarters of overtime only, but divison, league and the champion-bowl were both played until one team won, no ties allowed.

Angel laughed loudest, after all it was her team that Jess's Juarez was playing. With the exception of Moira, all the woman agreed this was the best damn game they'd ever seen. As the game was paused all the woman quickly began the long process of using the latrine. Five woman, and one girl, who was currently sound asleep on Moira's bunk took some time to use the single latrine in the room.

Tracy sat beside Delilah, who was teaching her how to shave herself. Tracy found the whole experience to be more fun then she'd ever had. Her hair was in curlers, and her face was covered in something that resembled guacamole, but she felt intensely giddy. All the other woman were likewise covered and had their hair in curlers. Delilah had trimmed Tracy's hair, as the ogre woman had never done so. Tracy's hair tended to be straight and they were adding some waves to it. But it was getting late and more then a few of them were yawning, Tracy included.

Except Angel who was wide awake, even though the juicer only wore her drug harness and dispenser during combat, her body through her bio-comp implant manufactured massive amount of organic drugs. But she understood her squishy friends needed their sleep. She called for them to all head to bed after the first game, they could watch the others tomorrow. This was quickly agreed upon by the other woman who yawned. The latrine break over they went back to watching the game.

An hour later El Paso finally scored the winning touchdown, ending the game 32-24. The women, save for the juicer all yawned and made to clean up. This done, they moved to their bunks, and Tracy left the cabin, but she didn't go back to her room. She instead made her way to the medical bay. The sight of Cross still laying in the bed, the machine quietly working on his broken body repairing the damage she had caused was enough to bring fresh tears to her eyes.

She sat down beside his bed curling up in the chair there. She closed her eyes as she cried, and eventually drifted off to sleep. But her rest wasn't nearly as restful as it should have been.

Glitched snuggled into Icy's furry body. She smiled as he pillowed his head on her breasts. She was breathing heavy, and sweating fairly heavily, making her fur damp and clinging. She sighed deeply , " Tell me that was as good for you as it was for me?" she asked him.

Glitch nodded his head, squeezing her tightly. " You have no idea." he said.

She giggled, playfully rubbing his groin with her tail, " So how long before your ready for round four?" she asked.

Glitch chuckled and yawned, " Sorry babe. It'll be atleast tommorow before I can, I'm so tired it isn't even funny."

She giggled, " OK. I'll take a shower then, I doubt you want to smell me all night. I tend to get the wet dog smell when I sweat."

Glitch squeezed her tighter, " You smell good. We'll take a shower together in the morning," he said sleepily.

Icy giggled looking at him she asked, " You don't think I stink?"

He shook his head, " Nope."

Icy giggled again,putting her arms around him and curling her tail around him. " Well, you tell me when you think I need a shower. To be honest I don't take one very often, maybe once a month or so. I only worry about you thinking I smell. The last thing I want is you to think of me as an animal." she said to him softly.

He chuckled, " Why would I think of you as an animal?" he asked her in total seriousness.

She smiled, nuzzling the back of his neck and kissing it. " Lets see. Because I'm a mutant fox. I grew up hearing how I wasn't a real person, but an animal. Lazlo may claim to be all for equal rights, and they are, assuming your species has a name other then mutant plus some animal species. But most human's that I've known have always thought of me as just a fox who has some human parts and can talk." her voice was slightly sad.

Glitch looked at her, shaking his head. " I most certianly don't think of you as a fox with some human parts and that can talk. I know damn well your smarter then me. Plus your super hot! Besides, all a human is, if you want to be exactly technical about it is a mutant ape. All sentient species are in fact nothing more then a mutated form of animal life, given sentience and the ability to reason abstractly." he answered.

Icy smiled, kissing his lips. " Well I hope you feel that way in a few months, or even better years." she said happily.

He grinned shaking his head. " I'll introduce you to the crew tomorrow morning at chow. We have a full size fridge with a freezer in our cabin, so we can go shopping for you some food tomorrow. I don't figure you'll like the ship food, no one does." he said laughing.

" I don't have to eat raw meat, I just prefer to. I can eat the same as humans, just so you know." she said teasingly.

He chuckled, " Your the first girlfriend I've ever had. So I plan to spoil you before you smarten up and dump me." he said winking at her.

Icy laughed shaking her head, " Well if it matters any your my first boyfriend, and my first lover, so you've already spoiled me." she said happily. Then a thought struck her and she asked, " Do you want me to wear my robe tomorrow? Or when I go about the ship? I'd totally understand if you do." she said seriously.

Glitch shook his head, " No we'll burn that damn thing in the morning. I never want to see you embarrassed about the way you look again. Your a freaking goddess! I will have to ask you not to run around naked, one of the other guys is likely to try and steal you from me." he said teasingly.

She smiled widely, shaking her head as she kissed him again, " Well that's the thing. I don't normally wear cloths. It's hard to find a pair of pants designed for women with tails, or a dress for that matter. I normally wear a bra, and shirt, but that's about it." she said giggling.

He shrugged, " I seen a tailor's shop down by the cafe I was in when I talked to you earlier, they advertise they make cloths for all people of any shape and size. I bet they can make you some underwear, pants, skirts, dresses, you name it." he said yawning.

Icy smiled happily hugging him closer, " Sounds good. I'm finding the idea of you dressing me very appealing." she said happily. She liked the idea of him undressing her more though.

Glitch chuckled and snuggled back onto her breast, she pulled the blanket up around them and soon both were deeply asleep.

Lake Ape sat behind his computer terminal. He typed some additional commands onto his keyboard, then sat back as the computer compiled the requested computations. He reached over, opening his mini fridge with his foot, and took out a grape soda. He easily popped the top with his other foot,then taking a drink he began typing in additional lines of code.

Lake Ape was, like so many in the Consortium, a mutant animal. Unlike Icy, who didn't know this fact, Lake Ape did. He was a part of the elite inner circle, amongst those first recruited by the black market to form the gang. Lake Ape was a mutant chimpanzee, or ape boy. He had been a computer programmer at Lone Star a few years back. But he had escaped when a small group of black market thieves broke into the complex and stole some very advanced genetics research. He was one of twenty such mutant animals who had been offered a place within the organization. A few lab technicians, scientists, and other experimental animals had been amongst them.

Those mutants and the data had been transported to the city of New Buffalo. Built on the ruins of the old Buffalo, it was the home of such newly formed corporations as Norcom. the Northern communications company and its independent computer network were the largest in North America. Also amongst those new corporations was Genetech, a genetics research and medical company that was making a killing in the marketplace. The CS and Free Quebec's economy may have collapsed and fell on their faces, but the rest of North America was booming. The Tolkeen war had made many nations rich beyond their wildest dreams, as a mass influx of commercial orders came in from the former kingdom. Since no one had been willing to take the credits the defunct kingdom offered, they had been forced to pay in gold, silver, magic and gems.

North America as a whole was rapidly becoming an economic powerhouse, trade was up all across the board, but at the same time, so was unemployment. Employers needed skilled workers, and the demand for these were at an all time high. But unskilled workers couldn't find much work in this day and age, as everyone else seemed to offer it.

But Lake Ape wasn't one of those. He was highly skilled, and educated, something his former CS masters would have been up in arms about. If they knew, which they didn't. Bradford had pushed the ape-boy program underground, along with a series of other projects conducted on animals far more obscure then apes.

The Consortium, the gang he and the others belong to was funded in part by the Black Market. Which was less a criminal organization, and more of a cut throat business. True many of their activities were criminal, but only according to the powers that be. The Black market simply brought the product to where demand was. If that product and profit were made illegally as defined by the government, then that was just to bad. Profit was what was important, not laws, not ethics, and not moral implications.

As Lake Ape entered another series of codes, writing his new program to search out and track for the leak. He worried that it might not be something his anti-spyware program could find. Despite the fact that the gang tried to recruit only those hackers who seemed both loyal, as well as skilled, it wasn't unheard of for a mole to make his way into operations. One of the Coalitions most annoying habits was getting good undercover spy's into places they shouldn't have been. Free Quebec was just as skilled in such activities and he worried it might be one of their own purposely leaking the Intel out,and not by accident.

The computer began to compile the code he had finished entering, and he sat back allowing it the few minutes it needed. Ofcourse he was worried about even an unintentional leak, the leaders of the gang, were the same draconian business men who ran the Company, the black market organization. A leak regardless of the how and why, was dealt with in the same way by these men. Quick and silent removal. The fact that so many jobs were coming up a bust, was enough to hurt the bottom line, the Consortium was a business more then a gang as far as these men were concerned. And what hurt business must be eliminated, unless there was a profit to be made in not doing so.

His computer beeped at him and he quickly entered the execute command. A small window opened on his screen. Several lines of text were in that small window, but key to it was the lines ' Spyware detected', and a number count. The name of that spyware program would be in the report, as would the trace of where the program had originated from it's host machine. The second line of text told him how many files were infected with that one piece of spyware. He scrolled over to the start scan button he had built into the program, and started the scan.

It didn't take long to find a piece of spyware his normal anti-virus/anti-spyware program had missed. Not that his programs were available to every idiot on the street. But still, it had been missed. Worse it had infected his entire system. The little bugger was found in nearly all his files. When the scan finally finished twenty minutes later, he hit the report button, and felt a shiver of cold sweat roll down his furry back.

Glitch had infected his system, his trace found that his system was infiltrated the moment he had excepted the IM from Glitch. Worse his system was transmitting many of it's files to a CS cache dump. Even worse his newly designed program showed that every Computer he connected to was infected. Although Lake Ape hadn't done much surfing since he had talked to Glitch, it was still bad. Glitch had been trying to find the source of the leak, Lake Ape didn't think he was doing this intentionally, so he was going on the idea that poor Glitch had been frantically trying to find the cause, only to have been making it worse.

Lake Ape disconnected his wireless modem, and disconnected from the network. He stared at his screen for a few minutes. He had to tell the inner circle about this, but it meant that Glitch would most likely be killed. Lake Ape liked Glitch, the kid, while cocky was skilled, and goodhearted. Glitch gave his all for the gang, thinking them some band of brothers, and in a way he was right.

But Lake Ape knew that in so many ways, they weren't. More then a few of the gang would be ready to hang him, the others would be willing to let the bigwigs remove him. Lake Ape was torn for a few minutes. He had to tell the inner circle. But he would warn the kid first. He picked up his cellphone and thumbed through to Glitch's number. He dialed it quickly, putting it to his ear. It began ringing, Lake Ape just hoped the kid was awake.

Icy, oweing to her nature as a mutant canine, didn't sleep as deeply as her human lover. So when the phone began to vibrate against the headboard she easily woke up and found it. The little screen said Lake Ape, and smiling Icy answered it. " Hey Ape, it's Icy. Glitch's sleeping right now, so what can I do for you?" She'd never talked to one of the Watchdog's before, truthfully other then IM's most of the gang rarely talked to any other member. In the year that she'd known Glitch they'd never talked over the phone. But she was fairly sure her new boyfriend wouldn't mind her answering his phone, afterall if Ape was calling, he'd found the leak.

Apes voice was fairly high pitched, and nasally, but he spoke quickly. " Icy. Wake Glitch up, this is uber important." His tone left no room for debate and she reluctantly shook Glitch until he woke up.

Groggily he looked at her and she smiled, doing her best to look non-threatening, still not sure if he was going to be ok with the ideal of waking up next to a Fox-woman. " Whats up babe?" he mumbled.

She smiled, "Lake Ape wants to talk to you." she said, handing him the phone.

At the mention of the Watchdog, his mind awakened quickly and he rubbed his eyes and took the phone. " Go ahead Lake." Glitch said.

Apes words came fast but he spoke clearly. " Glitch! Thank god man. I found the leak, and its bad." he said rapidly. His next words sent a chill down Glitch's back. " It's you man. Your system got infected somewhere, and you've been spreading it every time you connect to another computer, or node. My system got it when I talked to you in IM. I gotta tell the inner circle man, and they ain't gonna like it. Their probably gonna kill you kid. " he finished.

Glitch was shocked. He'd never thought he'd been the leak, his mouth went dry at the news. He however thought quickly. " Ape! Wait! What if I can find where my system got infected? I didn't mean to spread it, hell I didn't even know about it!" his voice was nearly hysterical.

Icy eyed him worriedly, she didn't know exactly what was being discussed. But she figured the leak had been discovered, and it looked like Glitch was that leak. She put a hand to his arm, " Tell him to send me the program he used to find the virus..." she started but Glitch shook his head.

"Your systems infected to. We talk several hours a day via IM, so my system already infected yours." he said.

Ape though had heard her words. Lake Ape liked Glitch, and he most certainly didn't want to see the kid get geeked. Thinking quickly thanks to his genius like IQ Lake Ape come to a compromise that would solve the delhma for a time. " I tell you what I can do kid. I can whip up some cover story, maybe we can buy you sometime. It's a CS spyware virus, yours might not be the originating system. I'll zap you the program and you to can work on the problem there. Just promise me, you won't connect to any other systems OK Kid? I'll try and do right by you." Ape said frantically.

Glitch nodded, promising Ape and pointed towards their computers. Both he and Icy moved across the room to the small table, they opened their cases and set up their transmitters as they booted up their systems. Within a few minutes they were ready for Apes download.

" Ok kid, I'll send it via IM to both of your systems. We'll talk via phone only, and then only for a little bit. But no talking about this ok? I want you to stay low, along with Icy. Hell her system could have been the origin system just as easily." he said. The IM popped up and Glitch excepted, the file requested permission to open, and he gave that too. It took a few minutes at their connection sped, but finally it was downloaded. He told Ape this and he said he'd call them sometime in the morning. Then he hung up. Glitch put the phone down as he opened the program and had it install.

" Babe, I'm sorry I got you into this." he said to her. Worry evident on his face.

Icy shook her head, " You opened your heart and arms to me, I'll be damned if I don't back you one hundred and fifty percent." she said.

The programs installed, they ran the scan, both systems were infected, no surprise there, but Glitch's point of origin for the infection was what startled them. A handle known to every hacker who ran the CS mainframes. Cerberus.


End file.
